
Ote_ZZ/z 

Book ~T~9 . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 




P. J. P. TYNAN. 



* * ' \ 
*•' ■» ■ 



THE 



Irish National Invincibles 



AND THEIR TIMES 



THREE DECADES OF STRUGGLE AGAINST THE FOREIGN 1 
CONSPIRATORS IN DUBLIN CASTLE 



THE PARLIAMENTARY PROVINCIALISTS' AGITATION TO REFORM 

FOREIGN RULE, FROM ISAAC BUTT'S MOVEMENT IN 1870 TO 

GLADSTONE'S BILL IN 1886. THE IRISH NATIONALISTS' 

PREPARATIONS TO TAKE THE FIELD AGAINST 

THE INVADER'S FORCES IN 1865, 1866, AND 

1867. GUERRILLA WARFARE OF 

THE IRISH NATION IN 

1882, 1883, AND 1884 



WITH AN ADDENDUM 

IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893 



3 



I 






\> 






I Y 

P. J. P. TYNAN 



ILLUSTRATED 



> 



of 






'h 



Of WAS 



*\*2 



/ 



*2/ty £>(?*£ *2~ 



NEW YORK 

IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLE PUBLISHING CO. 

1894 



J 



- T 



Copyrighted, 1894 

BY 

P. J. P. TYNAN. 



THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
RAHWAY, N. J. 



SDebication 



TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE BRAVE MEN WHO HAVE DIED FOR IRELAND IN THE 
DUNGEON, ON THE BLOCK, OR ON THE SCAFFOLD, OR COMBATING THE INVADER 
ON THE BATTLEFIELD, THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT OF CENTURIES WHICH 
HAS STAINED WITH BLOOD THE HANDS OF HER MERCILESS OPPRES- 
SORS, DOWN TO THE TIME OF WILLIAM ORR, THE BROTHERS 
SHEARES, LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD, THEOBALD 
WOLFE TONE, AND THE MEN OF GLORIOUS '98; 
TO THE 
DEATH OF OUR YOUNG MARTYR ROBERT EMMET, AND TO THE MEN OF '48; 
NEARER TO OUR OWN DAYS, 
TO THE MEMORY OF ALLAN, LARKIN, AND O'BRIEN OF MANCHESTER, MICHAEL BARRETT 
OF LONDON, A^D THE MEN OF '65 AND '67 ; LATER STILL TO THE MEMORY 
OF JOSEPH BRADY, DANIEL CURLEY, TIMOTHY KELLY, AND THEIR 
COMRADES THE MEN OF '82 ; TO THE LAST SIMPLE 
AND HUMBLE HERO, PATRICK O'DONNELL — 
ALL OF WHOM DIED because OF FOREIGN RULE IN THEIR NATIVE LAND ; — TO THE 
MEMORY OF THESE, THIS BOOK IS REVERENTLY INSCRIBED ; ALSO TO 
THOSE EARNEST PATRIOTS WHO ARE STILL SUFFERING IN 
THE PENAL DUNGEONS OF ENGLAND. I DEDICATE 
THIS BOOK TO THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD 
AND TO THE LIVING WITH DEEP 
SYMPATHY AND AFFECTION. 

THE AUTHOR. 



INTRODUCTION. 



This work was written in the winter of 1887-88. It was commenced 
soon after the denunciation of the Invincibles by the late Mr. Charles 
Stewart Parnell. The Irish leader in reply to taunts leveled at him by 
the British members at Westminster used the enemy's vile epithets to 
asperse the memory of the dead Invincibles and to assail the characters 
of those who, through being placed in the forefront of the struggle, were 
made public property by the enemy's myrmidons, and their names wafted 
on the wings of the press through the civilized world. This denunciation of 
the Invincibles by the Irish Parliamentary chief was re-echoed by many of 
the rank and file of his followers, inside and outside the enemy's Parlia- 
ment. The New York Herald printed it under the heading "Parnell 
Burns his Boats." This denunciation was indeed the " parting of the 
ways"; the last slender thread was snapped asunder which held Irish 
Nationalists to the hope that the Parliamentary chief would yet realize the 
promise of early years. 

To denounce and expose the hypocrisy of sailing under false colors to 
betray the trusting Irish, this book was undertaken. In assailing the 
policy and action of the Invincibles, these false Parliamentarians were 
heaping mountains of infamy on their own memories. If the actions of 
the Invincibles were what they were stated, then the fouler and deeper 
the damnation of those who created the movement to desert and slander 
their comrades in the hour of danger. 

The original intention of the writer was to confine himself to the 
Parliamentary Provincial agitation and its secret offspring, the resurrec- 
tion of the suppressed Land League, which was revived under the name 
of the Invincibles by the authority of the leaders of the Parliamentary 
movement. 

Irish friends in the United States urged the writer to extend the 
scope of his work to some of the salient features of the Party of Action in 
the Sixties. 

In sending into the world a book of this nature, the writer is well 
aware he runs counter to the preconceived opinions of many people ; and 
expects to meet the usual opposition which prejudiced convictions will 
always array against the daring spirit who ventures to combat settled 
forms of thought. It was so with Galileo and the spherical shape of our 
earth ; it was so with Columbus and his belief in a Western World. If it 
has been so with these immortal leaders in the world of thought, how 
much more with the Irish Nationalist who would try to draw his country's 
cause from the mass of misconception and falsehood that is struggling to 
smother it ! 

Among the many cherished convictions — convictions, the offspring of 
slavish historians — the writer would tear aside the Mokanna-like veil that 
enshrouds the Provincialists' ideal, the College Green Parliament. 

This political shamble, then in the plentitude of its independence as a 
law-making power, used its authority for the destruction of the Irish 
Patriots of 1798. Patriots, who following the heroic precedents of Lex- 
ington and Bunker's Hill endeavored by combating the enemy at Oulart, 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

Vinegar Hill, and Arklow to create in Ireland an independent republic. 
If this miscalled Irish Parliament had a right to even a thousandth part 
of the virtues claimed for it by its Irish Provincial friends and worshipers, 
how came it that a gigantic national organization, " The United Irishmen," 
arose in opposition ? At the time this national movement was created, 
this legislature held all the fabled glories and independence which that 
West British subject, Henry Grattan, with all Gladstonian eloquence, told 
us was conferred upon it esto perpetua. 

Lord Edward, Wolfe Tone, Thomas Addis Emmet, and their gallant 
associates must have been traitors, if this yeomen's Parliament had the 
smallest right to the name Irish. 

In writing this book, the author has endeavored to assail principles 
which he believed to be pernicious, or action which produced disaster, 
but never to attack individuals, only in so far as their own personalities 
were bound up in the great questions discussed. In the late division 
among Irish Parliamentarians, which has been the cause of a split between 
the Provincialists, personalities of a vile nature have been drawn into the 
quarrel. Irishmen will never gain the respect of mankind while their 
political warfare is so conducted. History tells us that the private lives of 
men have had little bearing on the great events in which they were promi- 
nent figures. The assailants of Charles Stewart Parnell's private life 
should have remembered the words of the great Master, " He who is 
without sin among you let him cast the first stone." While we deplore 
and strongly condemn the weakness of both James Stephens and Charles 
Stewart Parnell in not forcing the issue with the British enemy, we must 
not forget their great exertions and services, which placed Ireland in a 
position to strike. The defection of both men when the crisis came, 
proved that Ireland's leaders lacked the nerve to follow up their work by 
the only possible solution — action. 

When arrangements had been made by the then Parnellite Irish 
Government to take Charles Stewart Parnell out of Kilmainham prison, 
Parnell had not the courage to face the emergency and so refused to 
leave. Every preparation had been made, as in the rescue of James 
Stephens, with the additional precaution of having a vessel ready to take 
him at once from beneath the enemy's flag. The Figurehead of the 
Irish Ship of State would risk no dangers : he preferred to remain in 
prison ; he recognized the enemy's right to imprison him. How he soon 
after surrendered to the foe and made the Kilmainham treaty is a matter 
of well-known history. Had he accepted the plan of rescue, the so-called 
constitutional agitation would have openly assumed the manlier attitude 
of Wolfe Tone and George Washington, and that hero worship which has 
been the bane of the Irish people might then have been their salvation. 

In styling Mr. Parnell the figurehead of the nation, we do so 
advisedly, for such he was at that period. Certain men, in whom he had 
every confidence, and to' whom he surrendered the direction of affairs, 
were the actual leaders of the Irish Government at this stirring epoch. 
The " uncrowned king " reigned, but did not govern. His own evidence 
before the enemy's London law court on the Times trial confirms the 
writer's statement. 

In the early portion of his Irish agitation, full justice is done to the 
career of Charles Parnell. The policy of infamy commenced by the 
Phoenix Park proclamation, denouncing the action of the Parnellite 
government and giving moral support to the enemy, cannot be too 
strongly condemned. 

If the policy of the secretly revived Land League called the Invin- 
cible organization was, as they now state, open to condemnation, how 
dare they betray men by enrolling them in this movement ? How dare they 



INTRODUCTION. Vll 

stain the country with what they to-day call crime ? In either position 
their conduct was execrable. They begin the fight only in a cowardly 
manner to join with the enemy in its denunciation. 

There are two men whom we must except from the rest of these Pro- 
vincialists. One has passed away, Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar, who never, 
by any of his utterances of which the writer has any knowledge, voiced 
this infamous condemnation ; the other, the Hon. Patrick Egan, late Min- 
ister of the United States to Chili. But it is to be deplored that these 
gentlemen had not enough influence to at least make their colleagues 
remain silent. 

The use of the word Parnellite in this book includes all the Parlia- 
mentarians of that period. In relating this history, the writer has 
endeavored to place before Irishmen as forcibly as possible the great 
issues they have to mold. 

The chapter on the English Reform Bill of 1867, has never, we believe, 
been given before to the world. The writer's one great object in pub- 
lishing this book is to help to accomplish what has been the leading 
study of his life, the complete and absolute independence of Ireland. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

NATIONALIST AND PROVINCIALIST. 

PAGE 

The Irish Nation — The Yeoman's Coercion Parliament in College Green — Brutal 
Massacres of Irish Patriots in 1798, by the Electors of the Dublin Legislature — 
The Dawn of " Moral Suasion " — The Irish Provincialists — The Nationalists — 1 
Their Place in History, .......... 

CHAPTER II. 

(1868 to 1874.) 

HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 

Ireland from the Formation of the Federalist Home Government Association to 
the Public Appearance of Charles Stewart Parnell — Waiting for the Long 
Looked for Time — Absence of National Teaching — Remarkable Speeches of 
Mr. Gladstone — Mr. Gladstone's Coercion in Ireland — His Challenge to John 
Martin — Execution of Pierce Nagle, the Fenian Traitor — Account of his Trea- 
son — His Death in London — Great Home Rule Conference in Dublin, Novem- 
ber, 1873 — Federalist Programme Formulated by the Conference — Approaching 
General Election, 18 

CHAPTER III. 

(1873 to 1874.) 

BRITISH PARTIES — DEATH OF JOHN MITCHELL AND JOHN MARTIN. 

English Opinion Near the Close of the Gladstone Administration 1868-74 — 
Lord Chamberlain Suppresses Political Burlesque — Mr. Disraeli on the Glad- 
stone Ministry — A Government of Plundering and Blundering — General Elec- 
tion, 1874 — Capture of Coomassie — Indian Famine — Disraeli's Sneering 
Allusion to Ireland — Irish Elections — Return of sixty-one Home Rulers — 
Defeat of Chichester Fortescue in Louth — Ireland Accused of Ingratitude to 
Mr. Gladstone — Comments of the London Times — Crushing Defeat of the 
Liberals — A Large Tory Majority — Mr. Gladstone Resigns Office — Mr. 
Disraeli Forms an Administration — Mr. Gladstone's New Peers — Refuses 
to See an Amnesty Deputation — The Irish Electors of Greenwich and Mr. Glad- 
stone — Denounced by his Former Friends — Meeting of Home Rulers in 
Dublin — Mr. Butt's Great Speech — Formation of Home Rule Parliamentary 
Party — Signing the Roll of Honor — Meeting of the New Parliament — The 
Queen's Speech — Mr. Butt's Amendment — Mr. Gladstone on Mr. Butt's Home 
Rule — Amendment Defeated — Effect of Gladstone's Ooercion — Case of Patrick 
Casey — Great Home Rule Debate — Irish Attorney General's Crushing Reply 
for the Government — Dr. Ball's Emphatic Refusal — Defeated by an Immense 
Majority — John Mitchell's Return to Ireland — Ireland still at the Agitation 
Delusion — The Men of '48 — Beneath the Shadow of Mourne Mountains — Home 
Once More — John Mitchell — Scene in the Churchyard — John Martin's Death 
— Ireland's Grief — Tribute in the Dublin Irishman — Mr. Parnell Nominated 
for Meath — Mr. Parnell's Election Address — His Return for Meath, . . 41 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

(1875.) 

THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT THE GRAVE OF IRISH PATRIOTISM. 



PAGE 



Coercion for Ireland — Introduced by the Tories — Vain Change of Ministers — 
Britain's Twin Blessings to Ireland : Hunger and Hardship — Mr. Gladstone 
Resigns the Leadership of his Party — Mr. Gladstone's Pamphlet on Vaticanism 
- — Its Reception in Ireland — Dublin Fteeman Attacks Mr. Gladstone — Marquis 
of Hartington Elected Leader — Mr. Parnell's First Appearance as Member 
for Meath — His Reception in the House — Debate on the Coercion Bill — Mr. 
Biggar Commences Obstruction — Scene During Mr. Biggar's Long Speech — 
The Pile of Blue Books — Mr. Parnell's Maiden Speech in the House — He 
Denounces Coercion — The Irish Farmers — The Farm Laborers — The Royal 
Irish Constabulary — Ireland's Great Need Manufactures — Mr. Biggar Notices 
Strangers in the House — A Scene — The Speaker — Prince of Wales Compelled 
to Retire — Coercion Bill in Committee — Irish Chief Secretary and Mr. Butt — 
Mr. Butt Thanks Sir Michael Hicks Beach — Irishmen in the Enemy's 
Parliament Lost to Ireland — The O'Donoghue — His Past — His Change in 
Parliament — Mr. O'Connor Power — His Early Nationality — His Destruction in 
Parliament — No Place for Irishmen, ... 55 

CHAPTER V. 

(1875-76.) 

O'CONNELL CENTENARY THE POETS OF '48. 

The O'Connell Centenary Celebration — Address of the Amnesty Association — 
Lord Mayor McSwiney — His Political Standing — His Complaint Before the 
Viceroy — Amnesty Banner Hung in Chains — The Procession — Immense 
Crowds — Scenes Around the Platform — Amnesty Men in Procession — Lord 
O'Hagan — The Monster Parade — Silken Thomas — Addresses on the Platform — 
The Lord Mayor — Mr. Butt Speaks — O'Connell and the Oath of Supremacy — 
History Falsely Written — Amnesty Meeting under the Presidency of Mr. Par- 
nell — Condemnation of P. J. Smyth — Anecdotes of '48 Poets — D'Arcy Magee — 
Gavan Duffy — Sliabh Cuillen — " Dear Land " — Judas Barry and the Ballad 
Singer — The Limerick Resolution — Meeting in Nenagh — Mr. Gladstone's Land 
Act Denounced — Mr. Peter Gill and Land Bill of 1870 — Incidents of Disraeli's 
Coercion Bill — Scene on the Quays of Cork — Disraeli's Refusal to Release the 
Military Prisoners — Catalpa Rescue — The News Reaches Dublin — Great Torch- 
light Procession — Disraeli's Effigy Burned — Obstruction in the House of Com- 
mons — Opposition of Mr. Butt — Entry of Duke of Marlborough as Lord Lieu- 
tenant, December, 1876, .......... 62 

CHAPTER VI. 

(1865.) 

A RETROSPECT — THE PARTY OF ACTION — THE MILITARY COUNCIL'S PLAN 
OF INSURRECTION, 1865 — HISTORY OF JAMES STEPHENS* ESCAPE. 

Colonel Thomas J. Kelly's Mission to Ireland — Preparations to Take the Field — 
Musketry Schools — Drill Classes — School of Military Engineers — Army Signal 
Corps — The Military Council — General Millen — John Nolan — Ribbonmen and 
Fenians — Colonel Kelly's Military Career — Battle of Cunifex Ferry — Kelly 
Severely Wounded — Chief of Signal Corps — General D. F. Burke — The Irish 
Brigade — Charge up Marye's Heights — Burke's Gallant Action — Promoted 
General for Bravery — General Wm. Halpin — General Michael Kerwin — His 
War Career — Joins Twenty-fourth Infantry — Enters Confederate Camp as a 
Spy — His Dangerous Mission — Fight at Middleton — Kerwin's Tactics — 
Advance of Lee's Army — Retreat on Winchester — General Milroy Surrounded — 
Civil Administrator — Mustered Out — Leaves for Ireland — The Military Coun- 
cil's Plan of Insurrection — To Seize 30,000 Stand of Arms — Insurrection in 
the Military Barracks — Plan Rejected by the C. O. I. R. — Arrest of Stephens — 
His Defiant Speech in Court — Captain John Kirwan's Career — John Kirwan 
and Daniel Byrne at the Battle of Castlefidardo — I. R. B. Secret Police — 
Daniel Byrne Promises to Release Stephens — Colonel Kelly meets Byrne — 



CONTENTS. XI 

PAGE 

Duplicate Keys — Breelin and Underwood O'Connell — Stephens' Dispatches 
from Prison — Miller Sent to America— Journal De St. Petersboitrg on Ire- 
land — Colonel Kelly Plans the Rescue — The Six Rendezvous — The Paper 
Signals — Scenes Inside the Prison — The Ladder and Tables — Scenes Outside 
the Prison — Policeman in Love Lane — Kelly and the Locksmith — The Twelve 
Guards — Fearful Storm — Two O'Clock — Suspense — Three O'Clock — "Will He 
Never Come?" — The Shower of Gravel — The Rope — Stephens Rescued — 
Kelly Places Him in Safety — Excitement in Dublin — British Consternation — 
Arrest of Daniel Byrne — The Freeman on the Escape — Ballad on the Rescue — 
Miss Sarah Jane Butler — Nicholas Walsh — Miss Cecilia Walsh — Stephens 
Brought to Mrs. Butler's — Waiting the Signal for Insurrection — Anxiety of the 
Country — Stephens Calls a Council — Postpones the Fight — Cowardice and 
Disaster — Stephens, Kelly, and the Detective — Miss Butler and the Military 
Patrol — Kelly Gets Stephens Out of Dublin — Stephens Reaches Paris — Break 
Up of the Organization in Ireland — A Remnant of Gallant Men Hold 
Together, 71 

CHAPTER VII. 

(1866-67.) 

PLAN TO SEIZE CHESTER CASTLE AND CAPTURE THIRTY THOUSAND 
STAND OF ARMS — THE KERRY RISING PART OF THE SAME PLAN. 

James Stephens' Public Promise to Fight in 1866— The Organization Demoralized 
both in Ireland and America without Striking a Blow — Invasion of Canada 
Determined on by the Senate Wing — Battle of Ridgeway — Colonel Kelly and 
his Friends Determine to Fight — The Troops in Ireland Changed — James 
Stephens in Hiding — Colonel Kelly Leaves for Ireland — Stephens Goes to 
France — Chester Castle — The City of Chester Filled with Irishmen — Captain 
John Kirwan at Runcorn Gap — Plan to Begin an Irish Insurrection — Cory- 
don's Treason — Failure of the Enterprise — Determination to Begin the Fight 
in Ireland — McCafferty and Flood Captured on their Landing in Dublin — The 
Irish-American Officers in Liverpool — Difficulty of Getting at the Proposed 
Scene of Hostilities — Captain John Kirwan and Captain O'Rourke — Kirwan 
Demands to be Sent to Dublin — The Expedition From Gaston Near Liver- 
pool — Captain John Kirwan and Irish-American Officers Set Sail for Ireland — 
Landing Effected at Killiney Strand — Night March on the Railroad Track — 
Arrive at Carrickmines — Friendly Shelter — Reach Dublin in Safety, . .113 

CHAPTER VIII. 

(1867.) 

RISING OF THE 5TH OF MARCH — ATTEMPT IN SOME DISTRICTS TO COUNTER- 
MAND THE ORDER — TALLAGHT, STEPASIDE, AND GLENCULLEN. 

British Army — Numerically Small — Wretched Material Physically — Hesitation and 
Procrastination of Irish Leaders — Corydon's Attempts to Ensnare Kirwan — 
His Failure — The Corydon Hat — Officers Arrested — Kirwan meets his 
"Circle" at Black-Pits — Preparations for the "Rising" — Getting Artillery 
Ammunition — Kirwan's Plans to Meet Emergencies — Meeting of Dublin Centres 
at Anderson's, Rathmines — Massey Present — Concentration at Tallaght Decided 
on — General Halpin's Meeting of Centres on the Greenhills, Tallaght — The 
Night of the " Rising" — " Royal " Irish at Tallaght — Fright of the Constabu- 
lary — Death of Stephen O'Donohue — Rewards to Inspector Burke — Kirwan's 
Column Concentrates at Path-Fields, Rathmines — March to Dundrum — Capture 
of Policemen — Kirwan Looking for Aylward and the Expected Artillery — 
Aylward Does Not Come — Dundrum Police Barracks Summoned to Surrender — 
No Answer — Kirwan Reconnoiters and is Shot — The Wounded Man is 
Removed on a Car — Captain P. Lennon Commands the Column — March Toward 
Bray — Attack on Stepaside Police Barracks — Inspector Mcllvaine Surrenders — 
Prisoners, Arms, and Ammunition Captured — Lennon's Disappointment — Bray 
in Possession of the Enemy — The Column Returns to Dublin — Attack on Glen- 
cullen Barracks — Glencullen Surrenders — March to Dublin — No News of Hal- 
pin — No Re-enforcements — The Column Disbands — Colonel Thomas F. Burke's 
Address in the Dock — Death Sentences — Inspector D. Burke's Nervousness — 
Captain John Kirwan Captured — Sent to Hospital — Plans for his Escape — 
Escape Successful, . . . . . . . . . . .12* 



Xii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 

(1867.) 

LONDON ON THE BRINK OF REVOLUTION — IRISH PLANS FOR FOMENTING 
THE REFORM MOVEMENT INTO AN INSURRECTIONARY CONFLAGRA- 
TION IN THE BRITISH METROPOLIS. 

PAGE 

The Reform Agitation — Threatened Revolution in England — English Reformers 
Enraged at Tory Policy — Irish Plans to Foment Insurrection — Reformers Re- 
fused Admission to Hyde Park — The Irish Assault — I. R. B. Break the Park 
Railings — The Home Secretary's Indecision — Massey's Treason — Government 
Alarmed — Radical Reform Bill Introduced by the Tories — Resignation of Min- 
isters — Panic in Tory Councils Abates — The English Reformers Grow more 
Exacting — Determination to Hold Monster Meeting in Hyde Park, May 6, 1867 
— Government Proclaims the Meeting — Great Excitement — Fifteen Thousand 
Troops Ordered up from Aldershot — Search for Colonel Thomas J. Kelly — 
His Capture Anxiously Looked for by the British Government — Twelve Thou- 
sand Special Constables Sworn in — Irish Revolutionists Pour into London — 
Thousands of I. R. B. in the Metropolis — Armed Preparations by the Irish to 
Begin Revolution — English Reformers Determined to Resist the Government — 
Plan of the I. R. B. Council in London — Government Frightened at News of 
Irish Arrivals in London — Complete Surrender of Tory Cabinet — Military Orders 
Countermanded at the Eleventh Hour — Reform Meeting Permitted in the Park — 
Peaceable Close of the Excitement — The Reform Bill Made More Radical and 
Hurried through Both Houses, 136 

CHAPTER X. 

(1867.) 

" ERIN'S HOPE " EXPEDITION FROM AMERICA VESSEL WITH ARMS, AMMU- 
NITION, AND MILITARY OFFICERS — OFF THE IRISH COAST. 

Erin's Hope Expedition — The Volunteers Sail for Ireland — Captain Cavanagh's 
Sealed Dispatches — Easter Sunday at Sea — Re-naming the Vessel — Hoisting 
the Irish National Flag, the Sunburst — Saluting the Standard — Scene on Deck — 
Colonel Tressilian's Ballad, "The Green Flag Now Waves" — Off the Irish 
Coast — Proposed Attack on Sligo — Colonel Rickard O. S. Burke Comes 
Aboard — Rendezvous at Cork — Debarkations off Waterford — Captured by the 
Enemy — Erin's Hope Pursued by British Cruisers — Safe Return to New 
York, 149 

CHAPTER XI. 

(1867.) 

MANCHESTER RESCUE, SEPTEMBER, 1867 — CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION — 
INTENDED ATTACK ON CORYDON IN DUBLIN — EDMOND O'DONOVAN — 
REMINISCENCES. 

Arrest of Colonel Thomas J. Kelly and Captain Dacey in Manchester — Feeling 
among the Nationalists — A Meeting Called — Captain Michael O'Brien Pre- 
sides — Determination of the Meeting — A Special Levy Ordered — Michael Davitt 
as Arms Agent — Communicated With — Armed Videttes Posted to Watch Cory- 
don's Arrival — Meeting of Officers — Kelly and Dacey 's Rescue Decided on — 
Eleven Unmarried Men Selected to Carry Out the Rescue — Names of the 
Eleven Rescuers — Captain Michael O'Brien to Take Command — The Morning 
of the Police Magistrate's Examination — Michael Larkin Ordered to go Home — 
His Request to Take Part in the Rescue Refused — Scene at the Railroad 
Bridge — The Waiting Irish — Arrival of their Videttes — The Van Approaches — 
Guarded Securely — Two Cabs Filled with Policemen — Cahill and Boulger to 
the Front — Shooting one of the Horses — The Van is Brought to a Sudden 
Halt — The Panic of the Police — Roll off the Van — Rush to the Railroad Arch — 
Futile Attempts to Break Open the Van — Crowds of Onlookers Gather — Brett 
Refuses to Surrender the Keys — The Lock is Fired Into — Death of Sergeant 
Brett — Panic of the British Crowd — The Van Doors are Open — The Rescuers 
Retire — A Halt is Ordered — Kelly and Dacey do not Follow — The British 
Crowd Rallies — Numbers Approach the Van — The Return of the Eleven 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

PAGE. 

with Leveled Revolvers — The Crowd Retires Slowly — Dixon Tries to Rally 
the British — Cahill and Boulger Advance Toward the Crowd — The Leveled 
Revolvers — Dixon Falls Wounded — British Crowd Fly Panic Stricken — The 
Cells are Opened — Allen and Kelly — The Prisoners are Freed — Kelly's Hand- 
cuffs—The Eleven Separate—The Scene at the Inn— Walk to Ashton— Kelly's 
Coolness — The Irish Woman — Kelly Seeks Refuge — Kelly's Disguise — The 
Omnibus — The Arrest — The Loquacious Landlord — Return to Manchester — 
Letter from Paris Opened — Kelly's Decoy Letters — The Chief of Police Seeks 
Kelly's Re-capture — The Chief Makes a Raid — Kelly's Ruse — Letter from 
Liverpool — Chagrin of the British — The Chief of Police Resigns — Kelly gets 
Away Safely — Clerkenwell Explosion — Arrest and Death of Barrett — Captain 
Murphy and Casey Escape to France — Extradition Refused by the Empire — 
The Casey Brothers in the Franco-German War — Wounded before Paris — 
Andrew Casey Receives Legion of Honor for Valor — Captain Lawrence 
O'Brien's Escape from Clonmel Jail — Corydon in Dublin — Proposed Plan of 
Attack — Chancery Lane Detective Station — The Twenty-five Volunteers — Going 
for Greek Fire — Unexpected Delay — The Advanced Arrival — Cordon of the 
Enemy — Policeman McKenna Stops the I. R. B. Man — McKenna Shot — The 
Second Cordon — Sergeant Kelly Tries to Stop the Flying Irishman — The 
Sergeant Shot — The Castle Alarmed — Corydon Removed — The Irishwoman 
Secretes the Revolver — Mrs. John Kirwan Takes Charge of the Weapon — Mrs. 
Kirwan as a Patriot — Career of Edmond O'Donovan — Incidents in Fenian 
Days — Franco-German War — Three Days' Fight before Orleans — O'Donovan 
Made Prisoner of War — War Correspondent During the Spanish Campaign — 
Montenegrin Campaign — On Moukhtar Pasha's Staff — Adventures in the Mon- 
tenegrin Lines — Swim in the Danube — Turkish Rout after the Battle of 
Aladja Dagh — Entry into Kars — O'Donovan and the Angry Ottoman — With 
General Lazareff in Central Asia — Death of Lazareff — Appointment of Terguk- 
asoff — O'Donovan Leaves the Russian Lines — General Scobeloff Takes Com- 
mand — O'Donovan's Telegram An Revoir a Merv — Ride in the Desert — 
O'Donovan Enters Merv — White and Black Russians — Prisoner of the Akhal 
Tekkes — Elevated Kahn of Merv — Ambassador to England — O'Donovan's Irish 
Patriotism — Slaughter of Hicks Pasha's Army — Death of O'Donovan — Miss 
Sarah Jane Butler— Cecilia Walsh — Her Death — Nicholas Walsh Dies in Italy — 
James Stephens — Reflections on this Epoch, 157 

CHAPTER XII. 

(1875-76.) 

HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA " RESCUE — THE TWO EXPEDITIONS — IRISH- 
AMERICAN AND NORTH OF ENGLAND. 

Organizing British Soldiers in the I. R. B. Ranks — Patrick O'Leary, Military Organ- 
izer — Pagan O'Leary's Eccentricities — The Beggar's Religion — The Robber's 
Religion— Effect of the I. R. B. Movement upon the Military — Color Sergeant 
McCarthy — John Boyle O'Reilly — Wm. Roantree Appointed Military Organ- 
izer — Roantree's Career — John Devoy Appointed — Arrests of the Military — 
Gunner Flood in the Barrack Square — Flogging a Soldier — "Three Cheers 
for the Irish Republic " — Captain O'Connell and the Fenian Soldier — John 
Breslin Reaches San Francisco — He is Joined by Thomas Desmond — They 
Leave for Australia — Arrival at Freemantle — Desmond Leaves for Perth — 
John Breslin at Emerald Isle Hotel — Opening Communications with the 
Prisoners — Arrival of John King — North of England Expedition — Arrival of 
John Walsh and D. F. McCarthy — Breslin's Alarm— He Thinks they are 
Dublin Detectives — Movements Watched — In Communication with Prisoners — 
Breslin's Message — Meetings — Mutual Explanation — Catalpa off Bunbury — 
Breslin and Captain Anthony — Arrival of Tom Brennan — Delays in Starting — 
The Gunboat Conflict — Easter Monday's Departure — Drive to Rockingham 
Beach — Walsh and McCarthy— Midnight Ride to Cut the Wires— The Phantom 
Ship — The Phantom Boat — Cruise of Steamer Georgette — Race for the Catalpa — 
The Police Boat—Safe on Board — Head Winds — Cannot Double Cape Natural- 
iste — Compelled to Sail Back Toward Freemantle — Georgette Full of Armed 
Men — Cannon Loaded — Artillerymen at the Guns — Pursuit — Shot across 
Catalpa 's Bows — Soldiers and Sailors Armed for Fight — Demand for Surrender 
— Stern Refusal— The Stars and Stripes—" That Flag Protects Me, I am on 
the High Seas" — "Fire on Me and you Fire on the American Flag" — The 
Catalpa Tacks — Georgette Steams in her Wake — Bon Voyage — Exciting Scenes 
on Shore — Walsh and McCarthy Anxiously View the Departure — Freemantle 
Papers on the Escape — Lesson of the Catalpa Rescue, ..... 175 



xiv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

(1877-78.) 

OBSTRUCTION — IRISH INDORSEMENT. 

PAGE 

Obstruction Scenes in the British Parliament, 1877 — Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar — 
Prisons Bill, March, 1877 — Mutiny Bill — Mr. Parnell and Mr. Butt— South 
Africa Bill — Great Obstruction Scene — House Sitting Twenty-six Hours — 
Scenes During Night and Early Morning — Enthusiastic Approval of the Irish 
People — Reception of Mr. Parnell in Kilmallock — Banquet to Mr. Parnell — 
Letter from Mr. Biggar — Triumphal Progress of Mr. Parnell to Navan — 
Address of the Town Commissioners — Mr. Parnell's Speech on Obstruction — 
Mr. Gladstone Visits Ireland — Presented with the Freedom of Dublin City — 
Great Speech in the City Hall — Irish Emigration — Ireland and Belgium — Mr. 
Gladstone Tries to Get the Views of the People — Libel Suit, Bridge versus 
Casey — The " Galtee Boy "Exposes Patton Bridge — John Bright's Friend 
Buckley — The Mountain Peasants — The " Galtee Boy" Wins the Suit — John 
Bright and Marcus Goodbody of Clara — The Irish Farmer's Lease — Libera- 
tion of Messrs. Davitt, O'Brien, and Color Sergeant McCarthy — Reception at 
Kingstown — Public Demonstration in Dublin — Causes which Led up to Davitt's 
Arrest — Death of Sergeant McCarthy — Britain's Penal Dungeons, . . . 198 

CHAPTER XIV. 

(1878.) 

CLOSE OF THE FEDERAL ERA. 

The Russian War — Mr. Gladstone and the Fenian Prisoners — Home Rule Confer- 
ence in Dublin — Mr. Dillon's Resolutions — Mr. Butt's Rejoinder — " Dealing a 
Death Blow to Ireland " — Mr. Dillon Implored to Withdraw his Resolution — 
Mr. Parnell's Amendment — Mr. Butt's Resignation — Meeting of Committee — 
Mr. Butt's Address — The Dublin Irishman on the Failure of Agitation — The 
Flag of Ireland — " Sinking of the Federal Ship" — Home Rule Parties — Mr. 
Mitchell Henry and the Parnellites — Mr. Butt on Obstruction — Mr. Butt's 
Letter to Dr. Ward, M. P. — Ireland a Nation versus a Province — Manifesto of 
Policy from Obstructionists — Mr. Butt's Criticisms — The Two Policies — Release 
of Messrs. Ahearne and Clancy — Story of Mr. Clancy's Arrest — Last of the 
Fenian Prisoners — Public Meeting in London — Mr. James Clancy's Able 
Address on Prison Sufferings — Close of the Year 1878, 209 

CHAPTER XV. 

(1879-) 

BIRTH OF THE IRISH LAND LEAGUE. 

Machinery of British Rule — Land Bailiff, Agent, and Landlord — Chairman of 
Quarter Sessions — Resident Magistrate — Inspectors and Sub-Inspectors of Con- 
stabulary — The "Head" — Dublin Castle Privy Council — The Irish Peasant — 
His Humiliating Position — Illness of Isaac Butt — His Last Moments — Death 
of Mr. Butt — Meeting of the Home Rule Party — Election of Mr. Shaw as 
Chairman — Land Meetings — Mr. Parnell and Mr. Shaw — Fenian Convention 
in Wilkesbarre, Pa. — The Tory Chief Secretary — "Jimmy Lowther" — Land 
Meeting in Tipperary — "Pay no Rent without Reduction" — Attacked by 
English Press — Land Meeting in Mayo — Mr. T. D. Sullivan's Address, "In- 
fantry and Cavalry of Mayo " — Meeting at Headfort — Duke of Marlborough's 
Speech at Agricultural Dinner — Lord Carlisle and the " Flocks and Herds" — 
Lord Mayor of London's Banquet — Speech of Lord Beaconsfield — Land 
Organization in Ireland, 217 

CHAPTER XVI. 

(1879.) 

SPREAD OF THE LAND AGITATION. 

Mr. Parnell's Exertions — Irish Land Distress — Discussion in England — Opinion of 
English Merchants — Talk in Radical Clubs — English Workingmen's Hostility 
to Ireland — Irish Trade and Manufactures — Prospect of Irish Manufactures — 



CONTENTS. XV 

PAGE 

Irish Water Power — Ireland as a Commercial Rival to Britain — Nations and 
their Flags — Mr. Parnell's First Visit to Cork — Met at Cork Terminus by 
Accident — Land Meeting in Cork — Speech of Mr. Shaw — Gladstone's Bill Full 
of Principles — Mr. Parnell's Speech — Men of 1847 and 1879 — Condition of the 
Tenant Farmer — "Rational Resistance" — Article in Dublin Weekly News — 
Views on the Article — The Mallow Landlord and his Good Tenants, . . 227 

CHAPTER XVII. 

(1879.) 

WILL BRITISH LAND LAWS CREATE IRISH PROSPERITY ? 

* 
Appeal to the Irish Race for Sustainment — Land League Manifesto — Peasant Pro- 
prietary — Evils of the Land System — Subdivision of Farms — Small Holdings — 
Poverty-Stricken Occupants — Peasant Proprietary no Remedy under Alien Rule 
— Reasons Why — Congested Districts — Scene at an English Meeting — Irish 
Cockney — His Patriotism to Ireland — English Farmer — Diversified Industries — 
Rents in Ireland — Fall in Price of Produce — Instances of Subdivision — Speeches 
of Michael Davitt and R__J.. Sheridan of Tubbercurry — Fiery Speeches of 
James Boyce Killen, B. L. — Mr. Biggar's Advice to Farmers — London Vanity 
Fair on the Situation, ........... 240 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

(1879.) 

SHADOW OF APPROACHING FAMINE. 

Balla Proclamation — Protest of Home Rule Executive against the Arrests — Impos- 
ing Display in Balla — Military Discipline — Balla Demonstration — Speech of 
Mr. Thomas Brennan — Speech of Parnell — Proclamation — "Ready" — Speech 
of Mr. Lynch of Elphin — The Three Islands — Bonfires for Davitt's Release — 
Arrest of Thomas Brennan — The Dublin Freeman on the Arrests — Constitutional 
Agitation — British Opinion on the Approach of Famine — The Work of Agita- 
tors — Starch Manufactory — Duchess of Marlborough's Fund — Subscriptions 
from the Queen and Prince of Wales — Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Foster — Ireland 
a Mendicant — Departure of Mr. Parnell, Mr. John Dillon, and Mr. Tim Healy 
for America, 246 

CHAPTER XIX. 

(1880.) 

MR. PARNELL'S CRUSADE OF SHAMING BRITAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. 

Preparations to Receive Mr. Parnell — Parnell Reception Committee — Arrival of 
Scythia in New York — Reception on Board the Steamer — Demonstration in 
Madison Square Garden — Mr. Parnell's Great Speech — The American Nation 
the Arbiter in the Struggle — The Land System — Shaming England — Irish Poor 
Law System — "Slowly Torturing Our Country to Death" — Ireland's Great 
Weapon — American Public Opinion — Reply to Mr. Kavanagh of Borris — Free 
Land — Speech of Mr. Dillon — Cut off the Landlords' Supplies — Resolutions — 
Mr. Kavanagh's Letter to the New York Herald — Solid Interest in the Soil — 
Only Remedy Emigration — Effect of Emigration — Disband Armies, Dismantle 
Fleets — Peasant Proprietors Under Foreign Rule — Purchase of the Land — Inter- 
est and Repayment — Belgium Under Self-Government — Protected Industries — 
Glasgow Contract ^§6 

CHAPTER XX. 

(1880.) 

THE BRITISH "DYNAMITE FIEND " — BLOWS UP THOUSANDS OF WOMEN 
AND CHILDREN IN AN AFRICAN KOPPIE — THE CRUSADE OF SHAME 
IN THE TRANSVAAL. 

Britain's Career in South Africa — Invasion of Zululand — Destruction of the Twenty- 
eighth Regiment at Islandula — Rorke's Drift — Scenes in British Theaters — 
Song "Here Stands a Post" — Re-enforcements Sent to Africa — Sir Garnet 



XVI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Wolseley" Sent to Take Command — Lord Chelmsford Fights the Victorious 
Battle of Ulundi — Capture of Cetewayo — Invasion of the Transvaal — Suppres- 
sion of the Boer Republic — Hoisting the British Flag in Pretoria — Wolseley's 
Boast — "This Flag once Raised will Never be Lowered " — The Boers Commence 
a Crusade of Shame — Meeting at Doom Kip — Resolutions Passed — British 
Cavalry around Pretoria — Meeting at Wondersfontein — Protesting Against 
British Rule — Boer Belief in the Justice of the British People — Comments in 
the British Press — War against the Basutos — Wolseley Attacks Sekukina, the 
Basuto King — Ten Thousand Men, Women, Children, and Babes Seek Refuge 
in a Cave — Pursuit by the British — Gallant Defense of the Basutos — British 
Held at Bay for Three Days — English Writer's Description — The Cave Blown 
to Pieces by Dynamite — Horrible Carnage — Sickening Scenes — Dead Women 
and Children — Rearful and Atrocious Acts of the British " Dynamite Fiends" 
— A Scene of Horrors too Fearful to Contemplate — Wolseley's Dispatch — The 
Chief of the " Dynamite Fiends" Gloats over the Destruction of the Basutos — 
Warrant for the Arrest of the Boer Leaders — A Replica of Foreign Rule in 
Ireland — Disarming the Remnant of the Basutos — Sham Fight in Pretoria — 
Impressing the Boers with British Prowess — Grand Banquet — Wolseley Declares 
the Transvaal a Crown Colony — Boers Cannot be Trusted — Opinion of the 
Boer Newspapers, ............ 272 

CHAPTER XXI. 

(1878-80.) 

THE NEW DEPARTURE. 

Position of Irish Parties in the United States — Opportunism — Negotiations with Par- 
nell — Platform Accepted — Irish Opinion — Irish-American Views — The Men in 
the Gap — Real Opinions Withheld — Provincial Legislators — Moral Force and 
Moral Suasion — Letter of Mr. Webb, Home Rule Treasurer — Degrading Doc- 
trines — Logical Conclusions — Irishmen and Cornishmen — Disrupting the King- 
dom — A Mere Conspiracy — Joseph Mazzini and Italy — Statue in Central Park — 
Apostle of the Dagger — Wendell Phillips and Ireland — Orsini's Conspiracy — 
Paris Explosion — Napoleon the Third and the Austrian Ambassador — War with 
Austria — Freedom of Italy — No Opportunism for the Italians — Captain 
McGregor, the British Dynamiter — Wolseley Stealing on the Sleeping Egyp- 
tians — Honorable Warfare — Bombardment of Alexandria — Killing Women and 
Children — British Hanging Juries — Cant of the Age — Irishmen and Britons — 
Russian Nihilists and their Country's Flag — Literature of Ireland — False 
Teachings of To-day — Good Diplomacy — John Mitchell and Agitation — " Com- 
pound Vengeance " — Irishmen in British Dungeons — False Policy — " Irishmen 
Gain Nothing by Deceiving and Cheating One Another" — Mr. Parnell on 
Fenianism — A True Revolutionary Movement — Blighting Influence of 
Cowardly Teachings, ........... 282 

CHAPTER XXII. 

(1880.) 

PARNELL'S AMERICAN TOUR. 

Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon's Tour — Mr. Michael Kennedy of Troy, N. Y. — " Five 
Dollars for Bread and Fifteen Dollars for Lead " — Progress of the Crusade — 
Dublin Mansion House Fund — Cable Message to Mayor of New York — 
Spread of the Famine — Election of Home Rulers — Mr. Biggar's Motion 
Refused by Lord Mayor Gray — Carried by a Majority — Mr. Mitchell Henry's 
Otherwise — Lord Mayor's Banquet — Duke of Marlborough's Letter — Flunkey- 
ism in Dublin — Lord Lieutenant's Levee — Parnell and the Mansion House 
Fund — Parnell in Albany, N. Y. — His Reception by the Legislature — Address 
to the People of America — Attacked by the Irish Press — Parnell's Reply to 
Churchill — The Queen's Bounty in '47 — New York Herald Famine Fund — 
Dublin Freeman and Mr. Parnell — Irish Bishops Defend the Mansion House 
Committee — Reception in Congress — Parnell's Speech to House of Representa- 
tives in Session — American Public Opinion Ireland's Irresistible Weapon — 
Washington and Lafayette — Session of Parliament Stopped — Appeal to the 
Country — Lord Beaconsfield's Letter to the Duke of Marlborough — Mr. Shaw 
the Home Rule Leader's Reply — Manifesto of the Irish Confederation of Great 
Britain — British Empire not Homogeneous — Crown Colonies — Semi-Indepen- 



CONTENTS. XVII 

PAGE 

dent Colonies — No Imperial Parliament — Disrupted British Empire— diverse 
Interests Between Britain and Self-Governing Colonies — Mr. Parnell Sum- 
moned Home — Farewell Address — Forming Branch of League in New York — 
Mr. Parnell Escorted to the Steamer by the 69th Regiment — The Farewell on 
the S. S. Baltic, 300 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

(1880.) 

GENERAL ELECTION. 

Royal Reception of Mr. Parnell at Queenstown — Scene at Queenstown Junction — 
Reception in Cork — Address from the Nationalists — No Belief in Parliamentary 
Success — Banquet at Victoria Hotel, Cork — Mr. Parnell's Speeches — Addressing 
the Crowds in Patrick Street from the Hotel Windows — Mr. Biggar's Speech — 
" Ireland Needs Another Hartman " — Mr. Parnell's Exertions in Ireland — Pro- 
vincial Members Everywhere — Chevalier O'Clery — Row in Enniscorthy — Mr. 
Parnell Nominated for Cork, Mayo, and Meath — Nicholas Dan Murphy — 
B ; shop Delany's Manifesto Denouncing Parnell — Triumphant Return of Parnell 
for Cork — Parnellites Elected in Numerous Constituencies — Dublin Election — 
Chevalier O'Clery and the Cork Election — His Defeat in County Wexford — 
John Barry, Parnellite, Elected — Nomination of Mr. Kettle, Parnellite, for 
County Cork — Opposition of Shaw and Coldthurst — Bishops and Priests 
against Parnell in Cork — Exciting Election Scenes — Scene in Middletown — 
Mr. Hyde of Killeagh on Evictions — Captain Smith Barry — Tableau — Mr. 
Parnell Presented with Freedom of Cork City — Address to his Constituents — 
Elected for Cork, Meath, and Mayo — Unprecedented Honor — Kettle Defeated 
by Small Majority — Mr. Parnell's Letter to Chicago Daily News — The Most 
Powerful Ministry Cannot Withstand Them — Cry of " No More Coercion 
Now " — Rout of the Tories — The Liberal Party Restored to Power — Great 
Irish Rejoicing at the Appointment of Mr. Wm. Forster — Mr. Gladstone Prime 
Minister — Great Joy in Ireland that Bright and Chamberlain have Joined the 
New Ministry — Mr. Parnell Elected Leader of the Parliamentary Party — 
"Grand Old Man" — Harbinger of Hope — Ireland to be Governed by Irish 
Ideas — Approaching Great Victory for the Crusade of Shame, . . . 314 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
(1880-81.) 

THE " GRAND OLD MAN " IN POWER — OUTRAGE MANUFACTURE. 

The Dismembered Empire — Change of Government — Ireland under Gladstone — The 
Queen's Speech — No Land Bill — O'Connor Power's Amendment — Its Defeat 
— No Change toward Ireland — The Disturbance Bill — Its Withdrawal — Govern- 
ment Measure — Bill Sent up to the Lords — Great Gathering of Peers — The 
House of Lords — As a Final Court of Appeals — Earl of Beaconsfield's Speech 
against the Government Bill — Defeat of the Government in the Lords — Con- 
sternation in the Country — British Opposition Appeased — The Lords and Home 
Rule — Removal of the House of Peers — Only Possible by Revolution — Gov- 
ernment will not Re-introduce the Bill — Firmness for Ireland — Irish Press on 
the Defeat — Mr. Parnell's Great (?) Party— Relegated to the Regions of 
Impotency — Disturbances among the Irish Farmers — Outrage Manufacture — 
Public Meetings — Mr. James Redpath — Abolition and Ireland — Absurd 
Canards in the British Press — British Hatred of America — First Year of the 
Gladstone Administration, 326 

CHAPTER XXV. 

(1880-81.) 

OBSTRUCTION'S WATERLOO — ROUT OF THE IRISH PARTY. 

Trophy of Victory, a New Word — Captain Boycott — His Guard — Emergency Move- 
ment — Mr. Gladstone's Yachting Tour — His Reception at Kingstown — The Sog- 
garth Aroon— Prosecution of Mr. Parnell and the Leaguers — Great Trial in the 
Four Courts — Jury Disagree— Irish Barrister — Patriot and Prosecutor — Mr. 
Peter O'Brien, Q. C— Mr. John Curran — Lord Mountmorris Killed— True 



xviii CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Cause of his Death — Opening of Parliament, 18S1 — Mr. Joseph Chamberlain 
— Mr. John Bright — Coercion for Ireland — The Grand Old Man's Bill Opposed 
by the Irish Members — Great Battle of Obstruction — Irish Hold the Fort of 
Talk — Ministerial Relays — Irish Endurance — Achilles' Veterans — The Par- 
nellite Artillery — Shells Charged with Adjectives — Irish Hector's Gallant 
Struggle — The Second Day's Fight — The Second Night of Obstruction — House 
Still Sitting — A. M. Sullivan and Mr. Gladstone — Tim Healy to the Front 
with more Shells — A. M. Sullivan's Hand Grenades — Obstruction's Waterloo — 
Arrival of the Prussians — The Speaker's Coup D'Etat — The Debate Stopped — 
Supreme British Victory — The Old Guard Dies but Never Surrenders — Striking 
Picture in the House — Violation of British Law by the Speaker — Grand Tableau 
— Irish Members with Hands Uplifted — "Privilege! Privilege!" — Obstruc- 
tion Goes to Pieces — " What next, Gallant Hector? " — Arrest of Davitt — Ticket 
of Leave Revoked — Mr. Parnell Questions the Home Secretary — Frantic Liberal 
Cheers at the Arrest of Davitt — Scene in The House — Suspension of Irish 
Members — Mr. Gladstone's Complete Victory — Mr. Gladstone Introduces 
Closure — Waiting — Mr. Parnell's Public Decision — His Manifesto — Agitate — 
No Wolfe Tone Yet — Mr. Parnell's Advice to the Farmers — Pay no Unjust 
Rents — Appeal to Victor Hugo — Great Meeting in Dublin — Mr. Patrick Egan 
Denounces the Home Rulers — Protesting Against Davitt's Arrest — Noble Atti- 
tude — " No Disorder or Crime " — Ireland Prostrated — Change, . . . 334 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

(1881.) 

THE BOERS DISCOVER A CRUSADE OF SHAME USELESS — THEY ARE COM- 
PELLED TO RESORT TO " CRIME AND OUTRAGE." 

Dutch Boers' Views Change about England — Colonel Lanyon's Bogus Petition — The 
Boers Tire of the Crusade of Shame — Deputation to Holland — Reception in 
London — Mr. Gladstone's Treatment — Refuses to Make Good his Promises — 
Arrest of Boers by the British — Their Refusal to Pay Taxes — Similar Crisis to 
Parnell's — Boer Determination — Gravity of their Position — Republic Declared 
at Heidelberg — Boer Triangle — Proclamation of Boers — Colonel Lanyon's 
Answering Proclamation — Gladstone's Attack on Beaconsfield when in Oppo- 
sition — He Denounces the Annexation of the Boers — His Hypocrisy — Britain's 
Weakness — A Nation of Money-bags, not Soldiers — Her Great Necessity, 
Peace — "Crime and Outrage" — " Murderous Attack on the 94th Regiment" 
— "Outrage by Boers" — Defeat and Capture of the Regiment — British Re- 
enforcements — Martial Law Proclaimed by the British — Cape Times Denounces 
the Boers as Murderers — London Times calls for Stern Measures — Professor 
Hartin of Holland's Petition for Peace — Signed by Thousands of the Leading 
Dutch — Its Rejection, by Mr. Gladstone — Battle of Laing's Nek — Defeat and 
Rout of the British — " Africa for Africanders " — Boer Account of the Fight — 
British Government Refuses Boers Belligerent Rights — Rebels to be Hanged 
if Captured — Rejection of Mr. Rylands' Motion for Peace — Mr. Gladstone 
Determined on Further Bloodshed — Battle of Ingogo — Another British Defeat 
— Sir George Colley's Forces nearly Surrounded and Cut Off — British Wounded 
on the Field all Night — Boer War Song — Arrival of British Veteran Troops 
from India — Men of the Famous March from Cabul to Candahar — General 
Colley with British Veterans Seizes Majuba Hill — Battle of Majuba Hill — 
Stormed and Captured by the Boers — General Colley Killed — The Veteran 
Rifles and Highlanders Run for their Lives — Shot Down like Rabbits by the 
Boers — Gladstone Reluctantly Compelled to Make Peace — Wolseley's Proud 
Boast — Restoration of the South African Republic — Mr. Gladstone's Actions — 
Bloodshed in Ireland, South Africa, and the Soudan, 349 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

(1881.) 

Gladstone's melodramatic scene in the London guildhall — 

arrest of parnell. 

Semi-agitation — Demi-semi-revolution — Men in the Breach — Duty of the Men at 
Home — "Lost Opportunities" — Renegades in Parliament — Twenty-five 
Deserters from Parnell — Shaw's Denunciatory Manifesto — Mr. Parnell in Paris 
— Henri Rochefort — Victor Hugo — " Ideas are the Sovereigns of the World" 



CONTENTS. xix 

PAGS 

— Sir Wm. Vernon Harcourt's Sneer — Gladstone's Land Bill — Excitement in 
Ireland — Gladstone's Reception at Leeds — English Democracy does him Honor 
— Great Speech at Leeds — Mr. Gladstone Denounces Parnell — The State of 
Ireland not a Party Question — Gladstone Praises Dillon — Sir Charles Gavan 
Duffy — He would Beat a Drum to call Irish Attention to Gladstone's Land 
Bill — O'Connell's Five Characteristics — Ireland's Downward Course of Decay 
— Leeds Ma .ufacturers — Parnell's Advice to Buy Foreign Goods — Cries of 
" Shame ! " — Mr. Parnell in Wexford — He Answers Gladstone — " Means Used 
in '98" — "We will be Boers!" — "Gladstone the Greatest Coercionist and 
Unrivaled Slanderer" — " No Misrepresentation too Low or too Mean for him " 
— "Masquerading Knight-errant" — "This Pretended Champion of Liberties 
Throws Off the Mask " — " His Bayonets and Buckshot " — Gladstone a Thou- 
sand Times More Dangerous a Foe To-day — Mr. John Dillon's Reply to Mr. 
Gladstone — " A Dishonest Politician " — A Hollander Tells Mr. Dillon " Blacker 
Treachery was Never Practiced by Any Man " — He has Finally Overthrown 
the Idol Gladstone — The Fairy Changelings — Gladstone in the London Guild- 
hall — His Speech — Melodramatic Scene — Entry of Telegraph Messenger — 
Gladstone Announces Parnell's Arrest — Uproarious Applause — " Not Words 
Alone" — " Resources of Civilization " — " Should be Carried into Acts " — Scene 
in the Streets Round the Mansion House and Royal Exchange — Immense 
Crowds — English Workingmen Cheer for the Arrest of Parnell — Great Joy in 
London— Arrest of Mr. O'Kelly, M. P.— Mr Sexton, M. P.— Mr. Quinn— Glad- 
stone's Lettre de cachet — Numerous Arrests — The Crusaders of Shame — Their 
Hundred-ton Gun — " No Rent " Manifesto — Signed by the Leaders in Prison — 
Rage and Indignation of the Irish People, ....... 36" 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

(1881-82.) 

GLADSTONISM AND CRIME — THE TRAIL OF BLOOD — SLAUGHTER OF IRISH 
WOMEN AND CHILDREN. 

Excitement in Ireland — The Land League Suppressed — Colorless Politicians — 
Fright and Flight, but no Fight — Meeting in Palace Chambers, London — No 
Rent Banner Sustained — English Democracy Meeting at Trafalgar Square- 
Broken Up by Gladstonites — Great Irish Demonstration — Forming on Thames 
Embankment — Immense Length of the Procession — England Already Invaded 
— Irish Speeches in Hyde Park — Miss Fanny Parnell's Ballad — United Ireland's 
Editorials — "The Time has Come, the Very Hour has Struck" — Cartoon, 
"Gladstone and Britannia" — "Judas Gladstone" — United Ireland's Last 
Words — " Were they the Braggart Froth of Craven Cowards?" — " Shouts of 
Victory " — Mr. Wm. O'Brien's Arrest — Massacre of Helpless Women at Bel- 
mullet — Ellen McDonagh Stabbed to Death — Murder of Mary Deane — Scene 
at the Bedside of Mary Deane — Exhuming the Body of Ellen McDonagh — 
Inquest and Verdict — Gladstone's Minions Found Guilty of Willful Murder — 
Gladstone's Officials Cancel the Verdict — Sad Scene — Newcastle Chronicle 
Denounces Gladstone — Seizure of United Ireland — Winter of 1881-82 — Mr. 
Parnell's Parole — The Kilmainham Treaty — Gladstone's New Policy — Deter- 
mined on Crimes Bill — Inner History — Captain O'Shea — Negotiations — Mr. 
Parnell's Letter of Surrender — "To Forward Liberal Principles" — Release of 
Parnell — Victory (?) — Great Rejoicings — The Streets of Ballina Drenched in the 
Blood of Irish Children — Seven Brutally Massacred — Little Patrick Melody 
Falls Dead at his Father's Door Step, 385 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

(1882.) 

THE IRISH NATION STRIKES BACK — THE 6TH OF MAY IN THE PHCENIX 

PARK, DUBLIN. 

Ireland Still in the Chains of Foreign Serfdom — Change of Front for a More 
Vigorous Attack — Bustle and Preparation in Official Quarters — The Military 
Prepare for the Pageant— The Guard Ship at Kingstown — Tars Man the Yards 



/ 



XX CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

— Earl Spencer's State Entry as Viceroy — The New Chief Secretary, Lord Fred- 
erick Cavendish — The Cavendish Family — Enormous Revenues from Ireland — 
Immense Haul of Salmon — The Fish in the Blackwater Claimed by the Dukes 
of Devonshire — The Fisherman's Plaint — Hartington at the Park Meeting — 
Dublin Castle — Its Memories — The O'Neill — Brilliant Procession — Lord Spen- 
cer's Reception by the Lord Mayor of Dublin — Scene at Westland Row — Soft 
Glove on Mailed Hand — Arrival at Dublin Castle — Reception En Route — Takes 
the Oath as Viceroy — Holiday-Seekers in Phoenix Park — Hawthorn Trees — 
The Polo Match in the Park — No Change in the Position of the Guards — Invin- 
cibles — The Beauty of the Scene — Tragic Rumors — A Dreadful Statement — 
" Impossible, it Cannot be True " — Eight Thousand Troops — A Stone's Throw 
of the Constabulary Barracks — Promenade Concert in the Exhibition Palace — 
Varied Scenes in the Palace— The Affrighted Figure — The " Turkish Patrol" 
— Revelers in the Outer — Incredulity — Gaiety Theater, Dublin — The Opera 
of "Maritana" — Trinity College Students — Strange Rumors — Opera Hurried 
Through — "Alas! it was Too True" — Oh, Horror, Horror! Good Citizens — 
. Supping off Cruelties — What a Sacrilegious Crime — Sackcloth and Ashes — 
Wicked People — Pious and Holy Ireland — Historic Tragedy — Morning and 
Evening — Night's Shadows — The Grim Specter Death — Confusion in British 
Councils — Mounted Orderlies — Troops Under Arms All Night — Restore the 
Harmless Land League— The Police — Their Nervousness — Mr. Parnell's Grand 
and Glorious Victory Ruined — The Bandsmen and Police — Midnight Newsboys 
— The Luxury of Conquest — Uneasiness, if not Alarm — The Cry A udace is a 
Fiat Lux, 402 

CHAPTER XXX. 

(1882.) 

MAY 7TH IN DUBLIN — SCENES AND INCIDENTS AFTER THE TRAGEDY. 

Sunday in Dublin — Feverish, Anxious City — Groups of Men Discuss the Events of 
Last Night Outside the Churches — Scenes in the Phcenix Park — The People 
Remove the Soil as a Memento — Various Opinions of the Citizens — " If it had 
been Forster" — "Not Personal Revenge" — "British Rule in Ireland Struck 
Down " — The Police and the Taverns — Temporary Arrests — Britain's Secret 
Police — Sailors of the Royal Navy Dragging the Liffey — British Government 
Proclamation — Reward of $50,000 — Proclamation of Some of the League 
Leaders — Surprise among the People — Consternation Reading the Irish Procla- 
mation — Knitted Brows and Gathering Scowls of Wrath — "Is that the Way 
they Thank Gladstone for Sending them to Prison" — United Ireland's Con- 
demnation — Haphazard Arrests — The London Merchant and the Police Ser- 
geant — Rising in the City Expected — " Keep by the Tram Lines" — Arrests in 
Newcastle-on-Tyne — European Politicians and Statesmen — Opinions of the 
European Press — Victor Hugo's Rappel — " A War of Independence Seems 
Foreshadowed" — The Mot d'Ordre — "Continue the Struggle without Truce 
or Mercy " — Irish Lack of Political Education — Organ of Prince Bismarck, Berlin 
National Zeitung — " Till their Country is Sundered from Great Britain " — 
Henri Rochefort's Intransigeant — " Cannon the Ultima Ratio of Kings, the 
Dagger the Ultima Ratio of Subjects " — Austrian Journals — Vienna Presse — 
"Wonder how Men Could Escape from so Public a Place" — The Citizen — 
" Two Organizations in Ireland" — Citoyen, Paris — "Ministers Determined to- 
Try Trickery" — " Triumph of Independent Ireland is Certain " — "Ireland in 
Broad Daylight does More for Revolution than Nihilists who Hide Under- 
ground " — " Irishmen Strike Openly and Straight at the Heart" — Russian Semi- 
official Journal, Golos, St. Petersburg — " Movement is Political and Not Entirely 
Agrarian" — "Secret Party Aims at the Overthrow of English Authority" — 
Bataille, France — "Time is Past for Political Jugglery " — " Resolve to Reach 
the Goal, Irish Independence" — Marseillaise, France — " No longer Landlords " 
— "They Strike Down the Queen's Delegates" — "What Friend of Humanity 
Would Think of Blaming her for it ? " — Most Serious Act Since '98 — Irishmen 
Lack Moral Courage — Secretly Approve, Openly Denounce — The Dublin Irish- 
man — "The English Began the Bloody Struggle" — " First Declared War 
against Ireland " — " War Brought Down to our Own Times " — London Times 
— " Not only Brutal, but Defiant and Tnsolent " — " But those who Examined 
the Scene can Understand this Fact " — " All Dublin and Others who Examined 
the Locality See what it Means" — " Secret Societies Challenge Whole Power 
of the Executive." ............ 4*1 



CONTENTS. XXI 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

(1882-83.) 

THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY — SPENCER'S BATTUES OF HANGINGS — "THE 
BLOODY ASSIZE" — "ACCUSING SPIRITS." 

PAGE 

The Irish Crimes Bill — Star Chamber Clauses — Became Law July 12, 1882 — Arrests 
Under the Suspect Act — James Carey Arrested as a Suspect — Scene in Grafton 
Street — Seizure of a Rifle and Knives — Carey's Horror at the Name Informer 
— Unveiling the O'Connell Monument — Description of the Festive Scene — 
Lord Mayor Dawson's Oration — John Mitchel on O'Connell — Imperial Legis- 
lators — Lord Mayor and High Sheriff —The Murder Assize — Judge Lawson — 
Letter from William O'Brien — Francis Hynes' Drunken Jury — Midnight Orgies 
in the Imperial Hotel — Dublin Freeman on Packed Juries — Irish Protestants — 
"We've Hands and Hearts for you " — " I'm in Blood " — Callanan, the Perjurer 
— Judge Lawson and Mr. Gray — Mr. O'Brien Expelled the Court — Judge Law- 
son Sentences the High Sheriff — Three Months in Prison, ^500 Fine — Sent 
to Richmond Bridewell — Mr. Barrett, Catholic Foreman of Hynes' Jury — 
Results of the Bloody Assize — Francis Hynes, Death — Patrick Walsh, Death — 
Michael Walsh, Death— Penal Servitude for the Others — Perjurers Suffer 
Remorse — Innocent Men Hanged — Dock in the Court House a Shambles — Mr. 
O'Brien's Leader in United Ireland — "Accusing Spirits" — Dying Men Protest 
their Innocence — In the Dock — On the Scaffold — Francis Hynes: "I am 
Innocent " — Patrick Walsh : " The Day Will Come to Account for my Innocent 
Life" — Michael Walsh: " Before God and the Virgin I Never Lifted Hand 
or Foot " — Patrick Higgins : "I am Going before my God ; I am as Innocent 
as the Child in the Cradle" — Myles Joyce: "On my Dying Oath I Never 
Fired a Shot in my Life " — Thomas Higgins : " I Solemnly Swear I am Inno- 
cent ; this is a Slaughtering House" — Michael Flynn : "I am Innocent; I 
am Glad to go to my God " — Glutted with Blood — " Kicked into Eternity by 
Marwood " — O'Brien's Arrest — Sent for Trial — Before the Assize, . . . 426 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

(1883.) 

ARREST OF INVINCIBLES — BRITAIN'S STEALTHY WARFARE IN IRELAND — 
TRYING TO ENTRAP THE PRISONERS INTO BETRAYING THEIR COMRADES. 

Arrest of Dublin Invincibles — The Royal Marines — First Gleam of Light — Check 
for Check — Attack on Justice Lawson — Arrest of Patrick Delany — Attack on 
Juror Field — Another Proclamation Issued — The Star-Chamber Inquisition — 
Examination of Witnesses — Training Crown Witnesses Mallon and Curran — 
Inquisitors' Confusion — Head of Charles the First — Close of Act 1st — First 
Examination in Court — Robert Farrel Yields — Second Examination — No 
Informers Yet — The Mental-rack Fails — Third Examination — Arrest of Fitz- 
harris and Caffray — Fourth Examination — Mallon's Ingenuity — Mallon and 
Fitzharris — Kavanagh's Confidence Shaken — Mallon in Kavanagh's Cell — 
Kavanagh Falls — Mallon's Triumph — Bolton to the Front — Fifth Examination 
— Kavanagh as Crown Witness — Surprise of the Prisoners — Bolton, Curran, 
and Mallon — Not Yet Satisfied — Mrs. Carey Calls on Mallon — Carey's Torture — 
Mallon's False Statement of Curley — Carey Yields — Mallon's Victory — Sixth 
Examination — Carey Still in the Dock — A Short Demand — Saturday, February 
15 — Seventh Examination — British Trump Card — James Carey as an Informer 
— Consternation and Indignation in the Dock — Public Excitement — General 
Execration of Carey — Debate in the House of Commons — Forster's Attack on 
Parnell — The Greco Conspiracy — British Ministers Engaged in a Murder Con- 
spiracy — Arrest in Paris — Seizore of Shells — English Gunpowder and Poniards 
— Attempt on the Life of the French Emperor — Mr. Joseph Mazzini — Greco's 
Letter sent under care of the British Minister — Mr. Forster Defends Mr. Maz- 
zini — Letter from the Italian Patriot— Mr. Stansfield, British Cabinet Minister 
— Banker for Tebaldi's Murder Conspiracy of 1857 — Mazzini Letters to Daniel 
Manvini — Lessons to Irishmen — " Most Men Feel in their Hearts as I do" — 
" I Express it" — Captain O'Shea and Mr. Parnell — Surrender of Position as 
Irish Leader — Induced by Gladstone to Remain — Eight Examination in Kil- 
mainham — Sent for Trial to Special Commission, 446 



xx ii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

(1883.) 

RAID ON BLACKROCK RAILWAY STATION — ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE "NUM- 
BER ONE" THE INVINCIBLE ORGANIZATION — SECRET EXAMINATION IN 

DUBLIN CASTLE, WRITTEN BY PATRICK KINSELLA, LATE STATION 
MASTER AT BLACKROCK, COUNTY DUBLIN. 

PAGE 

Raid of Police on Blackrock Station — Chief Inspector Mallon Late — Mallon Arrives 
at 7.30 A. M. — Every Exit and Entrance of the Station Guarded by Police — 
Search for " Number One " — Searching Beds and Mattresses — Mallon Shows 
" Number One's " Photograph to Station Master — Staggered and Surprised — 
The Invincible Movement — The Invincible Executive — "Very far Behind 
'Number One' " — Cowards who Think it Diplomacy to Publicly Lie — Carey's 
Description of the Invincible Commander — Finding of the Photograph — Queen's 
Guard of Honor — Speaker at the Hyde Park Demonstration — Large Reward 
for his Apprehension — The Star Chamber in the Lower Castle Yard — "The 
Room was Small and a Cheerful Fire Burned in the Grate" — " Curran Posed in 
an Easy Attitude, Smoking a Cigar" — " No Tear of Sensibility ever Appeared 
to have Dimmed the Fire of his Strong Black Eye" — " Between Twenty and 
Thirty Policemen, who were Permitted to Remain on the Platform from 6.15 
A. M. to 7.30 A. M. to be Stared at by the Passengers, with No Leader and 
Apparently without an Object" — "Signals from Right to Left Flank of the 
Enemy" — " My First Shot had Told" — Fired Another — " Number One" had 
Time to Get Away — Private Door Left Unguarded — Confusion in the Enemy's 
Ranks — Retire to Consult — Mallon and Curran Reappear — " I had Whistled in 
the Storm" — Curran has Fury in his Looks — " Make a Clean Breast of it and 
you will be Looked After" — " Oh, Most Sapient, I have you Now" — "Verily, 
Most Wise, you are not a Daniel " — " By God, you will not Find this a Laugh- 
ing Matter'' — " The Locker on the Left of the Office as you Enter was Left 
Untouched " — " After Four Hours of Sharp Practice he Sullenly gave it up " — 
" Why, so be it " — " I will be a Dainty Dish to Set before the Queen" — Wait- 
ing Room for Crown Witnesses — " He Suggested I go to the Crown Witness 
Room as More Convenient " — " The Wind had gone to the Butt of the 
Clouds, Bringing the Rain" — Another Attempt to Entrap a Witness — " I will 
Speak to No One in Private" — Halston Street Court Room Hall — "I'll not 
till you Force me" — George Bolton, Crown Solicitor, goes to Blackrock Rail- 
way Station — The Station Master Refuses to see him Privately, . . . 465 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

(18S3.) 

TRIAL AND DEATH OF THE CAPTURED INVINCIBLES — JOSEPH BRADY'S 
STOICISM IN THE DOCK EVOKES ADMIRATION. 

Green Street Court House, Dublin — A Regiment of Soldiers Billeted in Detach- 
ments around the Court House — Dublin Garrison Under Arms — Irish Feeling 
Bitterly Hostile to British Rule — The Black Caravan Escorted by a Troop of 
Dragoons — The Captured Invincibles Arrive — Greeted with a Ringing Irish 
Cheer by the Crowds Outside — Artificial Terrors of British Vengeance — Joseph 
Brady in the Dock — He is Utterly Alone — Deserted by his Friends — The 
Enemy Appoints him Counsel — Base Treason and Cowardice of Leaders — They 
had not Fled to any Foreign Land, but their Cowardly and Craven Spirits had 
Fled — Scene in the Court House — The Jury Arrive with the Verdict — " He 
Braced himself up Boldly, Stood there with Head Erect Facing the Court, 
as if he at least could never say Die " — Joseph Brady was not Overcome by 
the Verdict — " He Fell Back on that Tremendous Strength of Will" — " Stub- 
born Pride and Hatred" — Sentenced to Death — "There were Blood and Fire in 
the Beauty of your Character " — Sketch of Joseph Brady — Trial of Daniel 
Curley — Sentenced to Death — Sketch of Daniel Curley — " I Love my Country 
and am Ready to Suffer for her " — Michael Fagan's Trial — " He was an Irish 
Nationalist and would Die One " — Thomas Caffray Sentenced to Death — 
Timothy Kelly Sentenced to Death — Joseph Mullet Refuses to be Represented 
by Counsel — Does not Recognize the Legality of a Foreign Court of Justice 
— British Jurisdiction not Legal in Ireland — Sentenced to Penal Servitude for 



CONTENTS. xxm 

PAGE 

Life — Evidence of Respectability — Judge O'Brien Exclaims : " The Terrible 
Thing Connected with this Dreadful Conspiracy is that they are All Honorable 
and Respectable Men who are Indicted" — Whit Monday, 1883 — Ireland in 
Mourning — Dublin City in Grief — Churches Filled with Mourners — Shops with 
Closed Shutters and Mourning Emblems — British Soldiers Massed around 
Kilmainham Jail — Newspaper Men Refused Admittance — Crowds of People 
Gathered Outside — Joseph Brady Dies — The Black Flag — The Kneeling Weep- 
ing Crowd — "Loyal and Noble as the Idolized Emmet" — Friday, May 18 — 
Death of Daniel Curley — Crowds Outside — The Father and Father-in-law of 
the Dead Nationalist — Other Nationalists Die on the British Scaffold — The 
Red Earl and the Assisted Emigrants' Wail of Agony — The Death Cry of the 
Dying Gael, ............. 479 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

(1883.) 

DYNAMITE WAR IN ENGLAND — EXECUTION OF JAMES CAREY — DEATH 

OF O'DONNELL. 

Seizure of Dynamite Factory in Birmingham — Panic in England — Business Upset — 
Arrest of the Home Secretary by his Own Police — Trade Paralyzed — England 
Suffering Coercion — James Carey a British White Elephant — New Zealand 
Report — The Cape — British Charges against Carey — His Description by One 
who Knew him — " Think of his Sufferings and his Ruin" — O'Donnell Leaves 
in the Kinfauns Castle — Carey Joins at Dartmouth — Scene at the City Hotel, 
Cape Town — Carey Gets Excited — Carey Changes for Natal — O'Donnell Follows 
in the Same Steamer — On Board the Melrose — July 29, at 3.45 P. M. — O'Donnell 
Shoots Carey — "O Maggie, I'm Shot !" — O'Donnell Pursues Carey — The 
Execution Completed — Carey's Look of Horror — Carey Dies — Scene Described 
by an Eyewitness — O'Donnell Cheered by Irishmen as he Lands in Africa — 
O'Donnell's Examination — To be Sent Back to England — Carey's Funeral — 
Interred in the Jail Burying Ground — English Consternation at the News — 
Joy in Ireland — " Victory for the Invincibles " — British Government Astounded 
— Revolutionists Penetrate the Secrets of the British Executive — They Frustrate 
their Plans — News in America — O'Donnell Defense Fund — General Pryor 
Leaves for London — O'Donnell's Trial, Conviction, and Sentence — Deputation 
Wait on the President — Joseph Poole Sentenced to Death in Dublin — Parnell 
Banquet — Mr. Parnell Presented with Thirty-six Thousand Pounds — Cable of 
Joy Sent by the Parliamentary Party — Death of O'Donnell — He Did his Duty 
— Death of Poole, 487 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

(1884-85.) 

DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT — IRISH PROVINCIAL- 

ISTS* JUBILEE OVER THE DEFEAT OF GLADSTONE AND SPENCER 

" SUBORNERS OF RED-HANDED MURDER." 

The Dublin Scandals — " A Deeper Depth " — Libel Actions against William O'Brien 
— Exposure of Bolton, the Crown Solicitor — County Inspector French — Manu- 
facturer of Perjurers — "Pleasant Particulars" — "Official Compounders of 
Felony" — " Inhabitants of Sodom Respectable Compared with Spencer's Castle 
Gang of Scoundrels " — Mr. Parnell's Speech on Coercion — Exposure of Glad- 
stone's Crimes Act — Persons Out after Sunset Arrested — Witnesses Examined 
Privately — Sent to Prison for an Indefinite Term — The Times on Parnell's 
Speech — The Atmosphere of the House — " The Stern and Silent Rebuke" — 
The Dublin Freeman Denounces Gladstone — " His Inaccurate Forecaste of 
the Future" — The Budget — Defeat of Gladstone's Government — The Irish 
Thirty-five — Great Rejoicings in Ireland — Rejoicings among Irish-Americans — 
It was a Famous Victory — " The Red Earl's Run" — " So Much for Bucking- 
ham" — " Burying the Proof of his Victims' Innocence in their Graves" — T. D. 
Sullivan, M. P., Denounces Gladstone and Spencer — The Tory Government — 
The Provincialists Hail the Tories with Joy — T. P. O'Connor's Views — Home 
Rule from the Tories — Its Passage through the Lords Assured — United Ire- 
land on the Tories — "The Tories, Ireland's Natural Allies" — "The Irish 



XXIV CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Question is Settled " — Carnarvon and Parnell — Tory Promise of Home Rule— 
Parnell's Delusion — United Ireland on Gladstone — "Baiting the Trap" — Mr. 
Davitt and Mr. O'Brien Differ — O'Brien on the "Nobler Version" — "The 
Pure Young Man " — Davitt's Indignation — Mr. Davitt and Mr. Finnerty — 
"Fraternization of Peoples" — Mr. Davitt Visits Rome — Tour to the Holy 
Land — Tory Promises — Banquet to Lord Spencer — John Bright's Speech — 
Banquet to Mr. Parnell — " It is Only a Question of How Much Self-Govern- 
ment " — " I am Afraid we Cannot Call the English Masters in Ireland" — "Can 
we Hurt England?" 5°l 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

(1881, 1882, and 1883.) 

INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE IRISH NATIONAL INVIN- 
CIBLES — THE LONDON " TIMES" ARTICLES, " PARNELLISM AND CRIME." 

Britain's Interest to Destroy every Germ of Irish Hostility — Entrapping the Provin- 
cialists to Condemn the Invincible Organization — The Invincible Movement 
— " History Relates but does not Inform against " — " We shall give no Names, 
but we shall Paint Reality " — " What we Relate we can Say that we Saw " — The 
Enemy Striking Madly and Wildly — Arrest of Parnell and the Leaders — Forma- 
tion of the Irish National Invincibles by the Irish Government of National 
Defense — Invincibles Created, Enrolled, and Invested with Authority by the 
Irish Nation — Thousands of Men Organized — Spread of the Movement over the 
Entire Country — Created and Organized by the Government of the Irish 
National League — Its Authority the Legal Power Covenanted to the Parlia- 
mentary Movement by the Irish People — The Invincibles and the League Practi- 
cally one and the same Organization — " It is Seldom Wrong to Speak the Truth 
Plainly " — Licentious Action of Gladstone and Forster — Arbitrary and Wanton 
Arrests — The Mask of Peace Torn off — Bayonets, Buckshot, and Dungeons 
Hold Sway — " Suppression " of the Chiefs of the Enemy's Murder Bureau 
Decided on — Meeting of the Government of National Defense in a French Town 
— Programme of Action Decided on — Guerrilla Warfare Ordered — The Invin- 
cible Organization Confined to Ireland — Its Spread over Ulster, Munster, Lein- 
ster, and Connaught — Forster Guarded by Armed Men in London — The Enemy 
on the Alert — Full of Vague Suspicions — Forster and the Invincible Meeting 
in the House of Commons Passageway — Alarm of Forster — Hurrying of the 
Guards — The Enemy ever Watchful — Armed cap-a-pie to Prevent Surprise — An 
Officer to take Command of the Invincibles in Dublin appointed by the Directory 
— The local Dublin Council — Forster's Drive to Dublin Castle — Scene Along 
the Quays — Invincibles on the Alert — Forster's Carriage Followed by the Invin- 
cible Vehicle — Men Drawn up along the Drive — The Omitted Signal — Failure 
of the Attack — Forster Hurriedly Leaves for London — His Return to Dublin 
— Scene at Westland Row — Forster's Drive to Dublin Castle — The Invincible 
Vehicle in Front — The Barricade on the Quay — Forster's Carriage Stopped — 
Escorted by Three Ladies — Swoop of the Invincibles Stopped by Authority — 
The Secretary's Carriage Drives on — The Kilmainham Treaty — Astonishment 
and Surprise of the Invincibles — Forster Leaving Dublin — Drenching Rain, 
Scene in the Streets — Muster of Invincibles along Great Brunswick Street — 
Forster's Carriage Reaches Westland Row — The Secretary Does not Come — 
Charge of Invincibles into the Railway Station — Forster not in the Train — The 
Midnight Guard — Invincible Vehicle — Forster's Ruse — Invincible Officer's Dis- 
patch to his Government — Peremptory Reply, Go on with the Work — Order to 
Concentrate in the Phoenix Park — March of a Troop of British Hussars — 
To Meet Again on the Morrow — Night of the 5th of May in Dublin — Anxiety 
of the Invincible Commander — News Reaches the Invincibles of the Ballina 
Massacre — Invincibles' Horror at the British Murder of Irish Boys — The Morn- 
ing of the 6th of May — Arrival of a new Foreign Governor — Arrival of a New 
Chief of the Murder Bureau — His Official Responsibility for Last Night's 
Murders — The Gathering in the Park — Mustering of Armed Invincibles — Deter- 
mination to Succeed — Expecting to be Hemmed inside a Circle of Death — The 
Arrival of the Hussars Looked for — The Armed Constabulary's probable Arrival 
on the Scene — Skirmishers Posted — Invincibles Ready for a Fight if Necessary — 
Polo Match in the Phoenix Park — The Enemy's Armed Guards Scattered about — 
The Invincible Skirmish Line — Possible Bloody Encounter and Combat to the 
Death — The British Chiefs of the Murder Bureau Meet — The Invincibles 
Come up — The Gleam of the Uplifted Steel — Panic of the British Guards — 



CONTENTS. XXV 

PAGE 

They Quickly Scatter and Disappear — Fright of a British Cavalry Officer — The 
Invincibles Outgeneral the Foe — A Walk past the Constabulary Barracks — 
The Park Gates not Closed — Blunders of the Enemy — Invincible Conference 
of May 7 — Indignation of the Dublin Invincibles at the Parnellite Proclamation 
— Moral Assistance to the Enemy — Treason to the Men in the Gap — Dispatch 
from the Invincible Executive — The Officer in Command of the Dublin Invin- 
cibles Arrives at Headquarters — One of the Invincible Directory Calls on Him 
— "Suppression" of a Local Tyrant at Castle Taylor, Ardrahan — His British 
Cavalry Guard Slain — The Invincible Government order a Truce — Weakness 
and Irresolution — Parliamentarians' Policy of Prudence — Organizing Fresh 
Bands of Invincibles in Dublin — Arrests by the Enemy — A Lady Messenger 
Sent to Dublin — British Hangings Horrify the Invincible Government — Their 
Hands are Forced by the Enemy — Order for Hostilities to be Resumed — Prepara- 
tions for Active Operations in Dublin — Arms Seized by the Enemy in Carey's 
Loft — James Carey Removed from Active Service in the Invincible Ranks — 
Carey Loyal but Indiscreet — The Dublin Commander and the Local Officers — 
Conferences — British Officials wear Bullet-proof Shirts — Ostentatiously Guarded 
by Armed Men — Fresh Arms for the Invincibles — Invincible Captain Carrying 
Arms to Dublin Travels with a British Colonel — Dublin Filled with Royal 
Marines — British on Guard against their Unseen Invincible Foes — The Red 
Earl's Ride — His Escort Half a Troop of Cavalry — The Invincible Com- 
mander's Plan to Attack the Earl and his Guard of Cavalry — Shells Urgently 
Required — Strong Force of Constabulary Guard Judge Lawson's Country 
House — The Two Invincibles Reconnoiter — Lawson's Constabulary Guard 
Invite them to Dine — The Invincibles Receive all the Information Necessary 
Unasked — Constabulary Sergeant Shows Invincible Lieutenant over the Ground 
— Sergeant Completely Unconscious who his Guests are — Lawson's City Guard 
— Invincibles Concentrate at Stephen's Green, Dublin — Waiting for Judge 
Lawson — "Will he Come?" — Expected Fight with his Armed Guard — No 
News — Delany's Blunder — His Excitement — His Capture by Lawson's Guard — 
No News at Stephen's Green — The Waiting Invincibles Retire — First News of 
Delany's Blunder and Capture — Panic among the Enemy — Fright of Leading 
British Officials — Delany's Blunder Saves Lawson — Vigilance Committee of 
the I. R. B. Shooting Affray in Abbey Street — The Invincible Commander's 
Surprise — Invincibles not Engaged — Planned Attack on Two of the Leading 
Jurors of the Murdered Francis Hynes — Attack on Juror Field — Westland 
Row Patrolled by Invincibles — The Expected Juror out of the City — Panic 
among the British 'Supporters in Dublin — Fresh Rewards Offered by Dublin 
Castle — Invincibles' Necessity for Powerful Explosives — Demand for Bullet- 
proof Shirts by Irish Traitors — The Enemy's Lord Governor Doubly Guarded 
— Arrests for Examination in Dublin — All Suspected Nationalists Arraigned — 
Secret Star Chamber Investigation in Dublin Castle — Carey and Kavanagh 
Refuse to give any Information — Both Prove Loyal at this Epoch — Ten Thou- 
sand Pounds no Temptation — Threats Fail to Shake Them — The Dublin Invin- 
cible Commander's Demand for Shells — His Urgent Request to the Executive — 
The Star Chamber Fails — The Enemy's Gold has no Seekers — Invincibles not 
to be Bribed — John Bull's Dilemma — Spencer's Determination to Arrest all 
Suspects — Training Hired Perjurers to become Familiar with the Appearance 
of Certain Suspected Men — British Determination to Hang in any Event — 
Policy of Endeavoring to Strike Terror Decided on by the Enemy — Dublin 
Filled with Marines and Spies — The Enemy Striking in the Dark — The Dublin 
Commander's Efforts to Procure the Shells — Timid Parliamentary Politicians 
Strangle their own Active Movement — Invincible Action Suffers — The Dublin 
Commander's Visit to one of the Leading Members of the Executive — Demand 
for Shells Made Urgent — Messenger from Dublin to Headquarters — The Invin- 
cible Officers Specially Request their Leader on the Scene — His Last Journey 
to Dublin — Conference — Preparations for the Attack on Spencer and the 
Cavalry Guard — The Last Meeting — The Last Farewell — Midnight Swoop 
of the Enemy — The British Strike Haphazard — The Enemy's Swoop Enrages 
Dublin Invincibles — New Bands await Orders to strike Spencer and his Guards — 
The Dublin Commander's Journey to Meet Executive — Procrastination — Ner- 
vous Caution if not Fright — The Statesman's Message — Promises of Support — 
Base Surrender of the Invincible Executive — The Dublin Men Cowardly 
Abandoned — Parliamentary Tactics Triumphant — All Dreams of Hostility Pass 
away from the Parliamentary Invincibles 521 



XXVI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
(1885-86.) 

GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. GLADSTONE'S FOREIGN 

RULE BILL. 

PAGE 

Irish Victories — County Conventions — Nominations of Members — European States- 
men and Ireland — Parnell's Speech in Mayo, November 5, 1885 — Opposition to 
Philip Callan in Louth — Solemn Promises of Parnell — Home Rule Certain before 
Two Years — Home Rule Manifesto — Gladstone and the Liberals Denounced — 
Parnell's Great Liverpool Speech — Bitter Denunciations of Gladstone — Parnell 
Accuses Gladstone of Wanting to Cheat Ireland out of Home Rule — Parnell will 
only Accept the Fullest and Completest Control — Result of General Election, 
1885 — Return of Eighty-six Home Rulers — Gladstone's Victory in England — 
Eighty-three Majority in Defiance of the Irish Votes — Parnell in Power — No 
Government can Stand without his Help — Parnellites could Never Have a more 
Favorable Position — The Tory Government Announce Coercion — Defeat of the 
Tories on an English Question — The Grand Old Man once more in Power — 
Mr. Gladstone's Review of the Situation — Leeds Mercury on Gladstone's Possi- 
ble Home Rule Bill — No Interference with British Manufactures — Another Irish 
Famine — Secessions from the Liberal Cabinet — April 8, 1886 — Scenes Inside 
the House of Commons — Gladstone's Home Rule — Great Speech of the Premier 
— A Responsible Irish Ministry Promised — Trevelyan's Opposition — Parnell's 
Speech — Churchill's Speech — The First Order — Parnell's Cable to America — 
Bill Satisfactory — Irish Enthusiasm — Public Meeting Thanks Gladstone — 
Great Irish Demonstrations in Support of the Measure — Letter from an Austrian 
on the Vienna Parliament — Opinions of the Press on the Bill — Gladstone's Defini- 
tion of Local Patriotism — Irish Nationality — Pure and Unselfish Love of 
Country — Great Mass Meeting in Boston — Mayor O'Brien Cables Resolution 
to Gladstone — English Premier's Reply — April 16, 1886, First Appearance of 
Gladstone's Home Rule Bill — The Bill in extenso — A Crippled Legislature — 
Shorn of All Law-making Powers — Mere Passage of Local Bye-Laws — Glad- 
stone's Public Lie — Irish Government a Despotism — No Irish Responsible 
Ministers — Autocratic Castle Government — Facsimile of Indian Government 
— Free from the Control of all Parliaments — Irish Parliament with no Power to 
Make Laws for Trade, Manufactures, or the Land — Britain Holds the Public 
Purse — Gladstone's Bill — Concentration of Foreign Rule — Irish Revenue — 
Power of the Lord Lieutenant to Pass Coercion without Parliament — One Man 
Power — An Additional Tax on the Irish People — Powerlessness of the Parnell- 
ites if the Bill Passed — Summary of Gladstone's Foreign Rule Bill — Not an 
Irish Chamber — The Coercion Laws — Dublin Parliament and Men of '98 — 
Debate on the Second Reading — Goschen's Speech — Parnell Indorses the Bill — 
Rejection of the Bill — Gladstone's New Coercion Bill — Passed into Law — 
Irish Evictions under Gladstone's Rule — Total for Gladstone's Short Term 
10,248 — Election of 1886 — British Workingmen Vote against Home Rule — Great 
Majority for Anti-Home Rulers — English Boroughs — Hostilities of Horny- 
handed Sons of Labor — Washington Rejects Home Rule — " Nothing Short of 
Independence can Possibly do," ......... 591 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

(1886-87.) 

BALFOURISM AND CRIME — TORY COERCION REGIME — MITCHELSTOWN 
MURDERS — CONCLUSION. 

Irish Agitators Try to Cheer their Countrymen — Justin McCarthy — No Coercion — 
Liberal Banquet to Parnell — Parnell's Speech — "Out of Gratitude to the 
Liberals Irishmen Cease to Commit Crime " — Evictions — Bodyke — Arrest of 
Women and Boys — Coolgreany Victims — Effect of " Rational Resistance" — 
Irish Peasants Attacked with Emergency Hatchets — Their Weapons Limewater 
and Stirabout — Disgraceful and Cowardly Teachings — Reduction of Rent Mis- 
leading — Greater Reduction in Price of Produce — Eviction Statistics : Before 
the Land League Era — Since its Creation — Ireland's Pressing Need — Industries 
— Britain as a Great Power — Her Small Army — Her Braggadocio — The Satur- 
day Reviexv on Britain's Weakness — Irish Members not to go to Parliament — 



CONTENTS. XXVU 

PAGE 

Journal de St. Petersbourg's Article on Russia and Ireland — Mattathias to 
the Maccabees — Judas Maccabee — Gird Yourselves and be Valiant Men — 
Mitchelstown Murders — Scene before the Platform — Charge of the Constabulary 
— Retreat for Arms — Opening Fire from the Barracks — The Murdered Men — 
Irish Peasant Steeps his Handkerchief in the Blood of his Murdered Country- 
men — Hatred to English Rule — Lessons from these British Murders — Propa- 
gandism of Nationality and Active Work — Conclusion, ..... 626 

ADDENDUM. 

IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893, - 645 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



P. J. P. TYNAN, -------__ Frontispiece 

General Michael Kerwin, ------ facing page 70 

General Denis F. Burke, Irish Brigade, - - " 82 

Daniel Byrne, _-.-_-_ . <• " 1Q ^ 

Group of the Irish Brigade in the Field, - - " "114 

Captain John Kirwan, Chevalier and Knight of 

the Golden Spur, ------- <• "122 

Captain John F. Cavanagh, U. S. N., - - " " 150 

General William J. Nagle, and Captain Augus- 
tine E. COSTELLO, ------- " 154 

General John Warren, ------ •« "156 

Colonel Thos. J. Kelly, U. S. Army Signal Corps, " " 158 
Captain James Murphy, 28th Mass. Vols., and 

Colonel Rickard O. S. Burke, Engineers, 

U. S. Vols., - - » "168 

Edmond O'Donovan, in his Robes as Khan of Merv, " " 170 
Edmond O'Donovan, Miss Sarah Jane Butler, and * 

Nicholas Walsh, Artist, - " " 172 

John Breslin, -------- » -< iys 

John Boyle O'Reilly, - " "178 

Captain Chas. Underwood O'Connell, - " 180 

Charles S. Parnell, ------- •< •« 256 

Daniel Curley, -------- " << 402 

Hamilton Williams, M. D., - " "412 

Patrick Kinsella, _______ " « 466 

Joseph Brady, --------- << » 480 

Patrick O'Donnell, ------- « " 488 

The Red Earl's Run, ------- « "510 



THE 

IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 



CHAPTER I. 

NATIONALIST AND PROVINCIALIST. 

The Irish Nation — The Yeoman's Coercion Parliament in College Green — Brutal Mas- 
sacres of Irish Patriots in 1798, by the Electors of the Dublin Legislature — The Dawn 
of "Moral Suasion" — The Irish Provincialists — The Nationalists — Their Place in 
History. 

The history of Ireland is one of the most melancholy volumes 
perused by the student or the patriot. It is the history of a great race, 
whose very virtues have been used to ensnare and to enslave them. 
Through their piety and their devotion to the faith of the fathers, they 
have suffered the most fearful persecution. On the plea of their religious 
belief has their property been taken from them, their children, by cruel 
laws — or rather illegal edicts, enforced at the sword's point — reared up 
in ignorance, to which has been added that frightful curse and dread- 
ful blight on human progress — poverty ! When, by slow degrees the 
religious persecution ceased, and hour by hour the dawn of apparent 
religious freedom was permitted to shed its rays unimpeded by persecu- 
tion, it was only to find that, with that light came rays of poison destruc- 
tive to their faith as patriots. Reflecting and thinking mankind would 
learn with a thrill of horror the slavish purposes for which this emancipa- 
tion has been used. The reward for a schoolmaster's head was removed, 
and by degrees the light of education was permitted to spread, but only 
for one object — to destroy all national germs, which home surroundings, 
love of country, or racial instinct had implanted in the mind of the child. 
But finding that this deep love of country and strong hatred of persecu- 
tion were too great, that the waves of national life beat too fiercely, that 
they overleaped all artificial barriers which the invader tried to create to 
stem its progress, then, with the devilish ingenuity which centuries of 
cruel cunning had made perfect, they caused the Irish people themselves 
to make channels, dig canals, and create wayside streams, that would 
receive the waters of national life and so destroy the onward sweep of 
the great Celtic river to the ocean of independence. 

History of national events became so distorted, the truth and false- 
hood were so entangled in the annals written for the people, that nation- 
ality, that pure and holy faith of peoples, implanted by the great Creator 
in the families of nations — this pure faith of nationhood became cor- 
rupted by an illegitimate representative, a spurious sentiment which tried 
to assume the robes of Freedom. The enemy either assailed or entered 
into semi-alliance with this recreant Provincialism miscalled Nationality, 
as it best suited his purposes — purposes which are either the complete 
subjugation of the Irish people, their cordial and complete union as a race 



2 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

with their Britisli would-be conqueror (an impossibility), or else their 
extirpation as a people from the island of their birth. This work of extir- 
pation is going on at the present time, for Ireland's unconquerable sons 
have never acknowledged the dominion or rule of these usurpers, since 
the first band of banditti from the island of Britain polluted the sacred 
soil of Ireland by their presence, down to the present hour. 

To make this Provincialism more deceptive in its mission of destroying 
national aspirations, it was necessary to clothe it with some semblance 
of patriotism. To do this more effectively history should not only be 
distorted, but made to lie. Truth was ejected from the national temple, 
and Falsehood set up and worshiped as part of Ireland's political creed. 
The Irish people, and mankind generally, were told that there had been 
an Irish Parliament, and all the brightest and most fascinating of pictures 
were skillfully and elaborately put before the world as the ideal Ireland 
during the short and miscalled glorious regime of this legislature. This 
lie, as black as ever was put in circulation by the enemy of mankind (upon 
whose shoulders human nature shuffles off its mortal frailties) has been 
written about by men of letters, spoken of by great statesmen, is accepted 
as a fact by all the enlightened peoples of the earth ; and yet it is a cruel 
and malicious falsehood — a falsehood by which the enemy of Ireland is 
not only trying to corrupt her people in wasting their energies for the 
imaginary restoration of a similar legislature, but also to foully slander 
them before the nations by the statement that Ireland had a Parliament 
which her representatives infamously sold away for gold and titles. This 
giant falsehood, this stupendous fraud on history — like another and 
one equally gigantic of the present day, passes current as truth ; and so 
myriads of writers criticise this lie, approve of this lie, and never go to 
the root to try and find the foundation of falsehood upon which they 
erect such wondrous fabrics to mislead and confuse mankind. This 
assembly, which sat in Dublin, was in no sense Irish, and had the same 
claim on the title Irish Parliament, as would have had a legislative 
chamber of African cannibals who, after settling in Ireland's metropolis 
by force, assumed to themselves the power of making laws and enacting 
some measure as to how or in what manner they would cook the natives 
to make them more palatable eating. 

The foreign colonists who came to Ireland, and who were rewarded by 
their government with grants of land (the fruits of robbery, taken by 
force from the native Irish), settled on the lands apportioned to them, the 
Ulster plantation, so called. These colonists soon became divided into 
two classes. When this turgid British stream was first emptied into 
Ireland's great rivers, during the reign of James I. of South Britain, and 
VI. of North Britain, it was in a great measure kept together in the North 
of Ireland. Succeeding settlers, during the reign of Charles, and the 
numbers who received Irish lands under the bloody regime of the Lord 
Protector, were scattered over the country. In a few years those who 
were made landowners founded an aristocratic or British class. These, 
some of them originally dissenters, all became Episcopalians. Others, 
especially the Ulster plantation, were composed of artisans, men engaged 
in trade, sturdy Puritans. These dissenters did not conform to the 
Establishment ; many of them in time became Irish in sentiment. They 
had no love for England, and became imbued with detestation of the 
oppression of the Irish. Many of these intermarried with the natives, 
and in a generation or two there was nothing foreign about them but 
their names. These colonists, who mingled in the waters of the great 
rivers, — were emptied into and lost themselves in the stream of Irish 
national life, — were the men who formed the patriotic section of the 
Volunteers, and afterward were the founders of the United Irishmen. 



NATIONALIST AND PROVINCIALIST. 3 

The larger number of the settlers were not in sympathy with these liberty- 
loving men. They remained from their arrival in the country in a state 
of unhealthy effervescence ; a seething mass of foul prejudice, corrupt- 
ing and poisoning the fountain of pure water into which this foreign 
stream was emptied, forming a stagnant pool destructive to Irish national 
life, and are so in a great measure to this day. These were the men who 
sent deputies to the College Green legislature so slanderously called 
Irish. The aristocratic settlers on the lands were those chosen as 
deputies ; their wealth, acquired by theft, gave them power. These land 
robbers in many instances were originally menials, or men, as the age 
termed it, of low birth. But, after a short time enjoying the fruits of Irish 
acres, they became lordlings, while the real owners were their serfs, living 
in squalid poverty and degradation. Such was the class that made laws 
in Ireland and usurped the name of Irish, as they had usurped and robbed 
them of all they had of worldly wealth. From this class came the Yeo- 
men, Ireland's brutal butchers in 1798, and they were the constituents and 
deputies who put on the name of Ireland to insult and degrade her for 
generations. The settlers who blended with the stream, and lost their 
foreign origin in the crystal waters of Irish nationality, were the class 
which gave Ireland so many devoted patriots, and which gave birth to 
such twin giants as Theobald Wolfe Tone and John Mitchell : one the 
great restorer of the creed, and the other the great apostle of Ireland 
a Nation, the cardinal doctrine of national faith. With the descendant 
of another settler of later years — Thomas Davis — these form the Trinity 
of great patriots, who shall stand before posterity as the Titans and 
leaders of the most noble and pure-minded of men in the pages of 
history. Wolfe Tone, the founder of the United Irishmen, was the first 
apostle of the doctrine of a United Nation. This great patriot restored 
the national faith to its original purity ; Thomas Davis and John Mitchell 
kept the light burning to this generation. At present there appears no 
hand to seize the flambeau of liberty and hold it aloft to purer air than 
that in which it now flickers, the foul and corrupting atmosphere 
of the present Provincialism, which seems as if 'twould extinguish it 
forever. 

One of the earliest Parliamentary acts of these foreign settlers was 
to pass a law depriving their so-called Irish legislature of any power to 
originate any measures without first submitting them to the London 
Parliament. This law, called " Poyning's Act," was an act of servility to the 
parent legislature, to whjch these foreign settlers at first submitted. The 
repeal of this act in 1782 was termed the dawn of independence in Ire- 
land by Provincialist writers. The members of this Dublin legislature 
closed the eighteenth century by basely selling away their political 
existence for bribes. These corrupt British settlers usurped the patro- 
nymic of Irish, only to persecute the more those whose names they assumed, 
and stained the later years of the century by the most brutal saturnalia of 
blood recorded in history. The massacres of the Greeks or the Bul- 
garians by Europe's invader, the barbarous Turk, were not more horrible 
than what Ireland's people suffered by these inhuman butchers ; the foreign 
settlers who came to ravish and plunder, remained to enchain and 
destroy. Their infamous penal laws, their repeated Coercion Acts, more 
numerous even than the enemy's Parliament passes to-day, are a part of 
the cruel history of their fearful regime. Some Irish writers speak of 
these men as Irishmen, and even go so far as to hail them as Ireland's 
illustrious sons. These monstrous misstatements have gone into the 
chronicles of the age, which nothing but an independent Ireland can 
wholly obliterate. Arthur Wellesley, afterward Duke of Wellington, 
was one of these men Irish flunkeys loved to honor ; even Moore, the 



4 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

gifted poet, under the evil and corrupting influences (to his nationality) of 
British social life, spoke of Ireland — "Hailing her Wellington's name." 
But the duke's reply to this claim of Irish nationality was as insulting as 
it was truthful. " If [said he] a man is born in a stable he is not necessarily 
a horse." The duke was correct ; this remark proves his nationality at 
once. Dean Swift is another whom these people claim as an Irishman, 
though he always called himself by his proper nationality, asserting at 
all times that he was an Englishman. Such were the corrupt influences of 
false teachers that there are to be seen, in Irish homes to-day, engrav- 
ings of great Irish patriots, among whom, to mislead the people, is found 
the portrait of this clever and brilliant dean, who was English of the 
English. He had not one spark of sympathy, interest, or feeling in com- 
mon with the Irish people. His Irish interests were centered in the small 
group of British colonists who were represented at the College Green 
chamber of coercion and persecution. The writers who so fulsomely 
claim Wellington and Swift as Irishmen, neglect to put in any claim for 
Major Hepenstal, a gentleman of the same class, and animated with 
similar feelings toward Irish nationalists. The major was a man over 
seven feet in stature, and utilized his great height by making himself a 
walking gallows during the war of independence in 1798. He usually 
indulged himself in the luxury of hanging Irish patriots with a rope 
strung across his shoulders. This monster was one of these British 
settlers miscalled by Provincialists Irish, and a worthy constituent of the 
College Green legislature. 

History written by men who could see no future for Ireland but 
alliance — which is slavery — with Britain, praises Henry Grattan, and hails 
him not only as a great Irishman, but as an Irish patriot. Henry Grattan 
was no more an Irishman than either Swift or Wellington : he was a 
colonist, filled with all their bigotry and prejudice, and a slavish subject 
of the monarch that sat upon the British throne. This colonial legis- 
lature was illumined by one solitary gleam of brightness, which flickered 
for a time, but soon the illusory light was quenched by a Coercion Act 
passed by the College Green Parliament. 

This bright flash of liberty sprung from the Volunteers, citizen soldiers 
composed in part of the patriotic dissenters of the North with a number 
of the more narrow-minded colonists; but several good Irishmen suc- 
ceeded in getting into their ranks. These patriotic men leavened the whole 
mass. The profession of arms had for them an ennobling tendency, and 
they felt a dawning patriotism and unwonted enthusiasm for their adopted 
country. This spark was fanned by the patriotic section into a flame; 
they met in convention and resolved to remove from the statute book of 
the colonial Parliament the vile Poynings Act, which made the College 
Green legislature subservient to the London Parliament. The citizen 
soldiery made a gallant display of their force, and in College Green, with 
flashing arms and cannon drawn up in array before the building, 
demanded their own slavish legislature to repeal the law which a pre- 
vious colonial Parliament enacted, and by their display of force com- 
pelled surrender from the British government and Parliament. This 
Parliament of the British colonists henceforth became free from all con- 
trol by the London legislature, and could pass what laws it pleased, 
either to coerce or to liberate the Irish people — a people who had not a 
single vote or representative in that House. Henry Grattan, on the 
eventful day this Dublin Parliament became free, arose in the House and 
made that famous, brilliant, and historic speech so spoken of in history, 
finishing with a peroration descriptive of the glories and freedom of Ire- 
land. What hollow mockery ran through his speech ! Ireland was at that 
moment bound hand and foot by these seers and their laws ; she was an 



NATIONALIST AND PROVINCIALIST. 5 

enslaved nation, groaning under the most intolerable tyranny by the 
enactments of this settlers' Parliament. 

But even they (the colonists) were not free from British control — a 
further mockery of the so-called independence claimed with such elo- 
quence and ardor by Grattan. No Ministry sprang from their Parliament. 
Their Executive was the London Government, completely free of all 
responsibility to the College Green chambers. The colonists could make 
the laws, but had no power in their administration. They had not a 
shadow of authority in the island. Britain, with all her seeming surren- 
der, never yielded one jot of actual power over Ireland. The coercive 
colonists rejected the support of the Irish people, who implored a union 
with them. They left the hands of the nation manacled where alone help 
could come to them, and where the true foundation of liberty could be 
built up. 

The Volunteers held conventions, in all of which they preached the 
true doctrines of liberty ; the lessons taught by American independence 
lingered in the breasts of many of these sturdy and patriotic dissenters. 
Henry Grattan viewed these conventions with jealousy and distrust. A 
Coercion Bill was introduced into the settlers' Parliament which received 
his cordial and active support. This degrading bill, coming from what is 
called a free Parliament, was named the Convention Act. Soon after the 
Volunteers disbanded, the speck of light remained no longer visible, and 
the gleam of hope quickly died away. Fresh measures of coercion 
directed against the Irish people passed this tyrannic colonial Parliament. 
Instead of removing the shackles which bound the limbs of the nation, 
this independent colonial legislature created fresh enactments to more 
firmly rivet the chains which held the people in suffering and in 
degradation. 

Henry Grattan, in his greatest stretch of liberality, might make the 
chains less galling on the Irish people, but he would not remove them. 
There are epochs in the life of nations, when public men by their silence 
commit a criminal act, and participate in either slander or persecution by 
not condemning it. What was Grattan's action, when his constituents and 
the constituents of his fellow-members were brutally murdering and 
burning the homes of the Irish people ? When arson and murder — 
murder which seemed to mock God's sunlight — and the odor of car- 
nage went up to Heaven claiming justice and retribution at the throne 
of the Most High ; when women and children, the aged and the infirm, 
irrespective of creed or sex, suffered these horrors, he maintained a 
criminal silence. The brutes who hanged the Irish Presbyterian patriot, 
Monroe, before his own door in Lisburn in the presence of his wife and 
children, were all constituents of this infamous legislature so falsely 
written in history as the Irish Parliament. The Irish people had no 
power to cast, a single vote for any representative to make laws for 
them; they were an enslaved but not a conquered race, and this body 
of tyrants who usurped the national perogatives were no more deputies 
of Ireland than would have been the African cannibals, if these less 
brutal savages sat in College Green. What the African savages could 
not do the British savages were instrumental in doing, and that is, 
slandering the name of Ireland to posterity, and deceiving future gen- 
erations into believing in the falsehood that this Parliament was Irish and 
represented the lost glories of the Irish race. The few patriots who 
found their way into that chamber left it before 1798 ; they were dis- 
gusted and horrified at its brutal and persecuting tendencies. These 
patriots knew that this assembly was a noxious and injurious body, ready 
at all times to do Britain's work, the destruction of the liberties of the 
Irish nation. Had the struggle for independence been successful, 



6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

this vile assembly would have disappeared to give rise to a chamber freely 
elected by the whole people, such as the United States Congress. 

During that year, when Ireland flung her banner to the breeze, sup- 
ported by a brave but half-armed people, 350 Irish patriots were sur- 
rounded at Gibbet-Rath by a large armed force of the invaders. The 
Irish surrendered to a British general, with the promise that they would 
be treated as prisoners of war. 

They were scarcely more than disarmed when the brutal soldiery fell 
upon them and began a cold-blooded massacre. Foremost among these 
assassins was a corps of Yeomanry called Lord Joselyn's Fox Hunters. 
They massacred every Irishman who tried, by flying, to break that ring of 
death. The fearful butchery went on while one of these Irish patriots 
remained living. They were shot and stabbed to death ; some of the slain 
men were covered with gashes, showing the barbarity and savagery of this per- 
fidious massacre. Who were these assassins ? They were colonists, elect- 
ors, whose representatives sat in that infamous Parliament in College 
Green. In a ball-alley at Carnew, County Wexford, a number of prisoners 
were taken out and shot, riddled by the bullets of wanton assassins. 
Beneath whose muskets fell these slaughtered men ? Their blood 
lies at the door of the invaders, Britain's brutal instruments, whose 
representatives made laws in that free (?) colonial assembly in Dublin. 

The morning of the 24th of May this assembly or colonial Parliament 
was in session, when Castlereagh entered and told this so-called Irish 
Parliament that the Irish people were up in arms for national independ- 
ence, and that they had risen in insurrection against foreign rule. 
Castlereagh stigmatized these patriotic Irishmen as rebels, and used other 
vile epithets, all of which were unanimously adopted and repeated by 
this infamous legislature. There was not one man — not even one, no 
solitary spirit of Irish manhood — to be found among these craven tyrants 
and false legislators, that attempted to offer the smallest opposition to the 
demands made upon that so-called Irish Parliament by a British Minister, 
asking votes to help to suppress in blood the glorious war of independence 
against Ireland's invader and despoiler. There was not a single redeem- 
ing feature in this gathering of Ireland's bitter foes ; and these men are 
handed down to posterity, by kindred slaves, as an Irish Parliament. 

The historians, Hay and Madden, tell us : " Any person having his 
hair cut (and therefore called a Croppy, by which appellation the soldiery 
designated United Irishmen), on being pointed out, was immediately 
seized, brought into a guardhouse, where caps of coarse linen or strong 
brown paper, besmeared inside with pitch, were always kept ready for 
service. The unfortunate victim had one of those, well heated, com- 
pressed on his head, and when judged of a proper degree of coolness, so 
that it could not be easily pulled off, the sufferer was turned out amid the 
acclamations of his merciless torturers. Many of these persecuted in this 
manner experienced additional anguish from the melted pitch trickling 
into their eyes. This afforded a rare addition of enjoyment to these keen 
sportsmen, who reiterated their horrid yells of exultation in the confusion 
and hurry of escaping from the ferocious hands of these more than savage 
barbarians. The blinded victims frequently fell or inadvertently dashed 
their heads against the walls on their way. The pain of disengaging the 
pitched cap from the head must be next to intolerable. The hair was often 
torn from the roots, and not infrequently parts of the skin were so scalded 
or blistered as to adhere and come off along with it." These barbarous 
cruelties, worthy of demons, were part of that monster devil fish Britain's 
cursed career in the Green Isle of Erin, and her colonists' free Parliament 
in Dublin sanctioned these horrors and never attempted to in any manner 
use their law-making power to stop this saturnalia of blood. 



NATIONALIST AND PROVINCIALIST. 7 

"Moistened gunpowder was frequently rubbed into the hair, cut close, 
and then set on fire. Some, while shearing for this purpose, had the tips 
of their ears snipped off. Sometimes an entire ear, and often both ears 
were completely cut off, and many lost part of their noses during the like 
preparation." The wretches who perpetrated these atrocities were 
electors, and sympathized with the College Green legislature in uphold- 
ing the invader's infamous rule in Ireland. 

Hunter Gowan, captain of a Yeomanry corps of these colonists, made 
a triumphal entry into the town of Gorey at the head of his corps, with his 
sword drawn and a human finger stuck on the point of it. After the 
labors of the day, himself and his associates retired to a tavern to refresh 
themselves, and they stirred their punch with this finger, cut from an Irish 
patriot's hand. 

Who were those brutes who indulged in such beastly orgies ? They were 
the friends, associates, and constituents of this anti-Irish coercion Parlia- 
ment in Dublin. 

This College Green legislature was a den of coercionists, bigots, and 
instruments of British conquest — stripped of the glamour cast around it 
by time-serving politicians. These murderous Yeomen were the ferocious 
electors of that legislature which corrupt teaching induces Irishmen to 
speak of as their lost Parliament. 

In the preamble to an infamous bill passed by this settlers' assembly it. 
September, 1798, it was stated that Thomas Addis Emmet,Thomas Russell, 
Samuel Neilson, and other Irish Nationalists had become renegades to 
Ireland — these illustrious men and pure patriots, who advocated and 
believed in the true national faith : that of absolute and complete inde- 
pendence, then, as now, the only salvation for an oppressed nationality. 
This coercive Parliament of foreign settlers stated that these noble unselfish 
Irishmen had retracted all their former declarations of national faith and 
had asked pardon of the enemy's King ; this malicious lie was only equaled 
by the kindred falsehood that the legislature that coined it was in any 
manner Irish. If prejudice, hatred, or ignorance had not besotted their 
intellects, they must have known that these statements were false and 
slanderous aspersions on the characters of honorable men ; but Castlereagh 
and his murderous associates could do with this assembly of persecutors 
as they wished. It terminated its infamous and sanguinary career by 
selling itself out of existence. There was a short galvanization of a seem- 
ing nationality by some of its members who opposed its annihilation, 
but they were mere words — such noble sentiments as might be delivered 
by an able actor before the footlights, to be forgotten when the costume 
of the stage was laid aside. There was not one among them to ever in 
any way take an active part in trying to restore to Ireland her stolen 
independence. Where were these mock patriots during the Emmet 
preparation for a renewed war to restore to Ireland her ancient splendor 
and liberty ? Who among them would acknowledge his friendship, when 
he delivered those immortal utterances which consecrated his young life 
to his country's independence? 

He left behind a noble duty for Irishmen to fulfill — to place their 
country among the independent nations of the earth, when as freemen 
they could write his epitaph. If the Irish are not lo remain a race 
of Helots, it is their solemn and sacred duty to redeem his grave from 
the silence of bondage, or stand before mankind for all ages as igno- 
minious and cowardly slaves. 

This cannot be done by annual meetings and speeches, which make this 
young martyr's name a pretext for false nationality, and are a blasphemy 
upon his memory, permitting Provincialists to desecrate the name of 
country by advocating an alliance with one of the enemy's political 



8 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

parties, preaching this monstrous doctrine upon a national platform made 
sacred by the name of Robert Emmet — a platform from which should 
be heard the manly avowal and advocacy of the only possible way by 
which Ireland can regain her lost liberty. The way Emmet pointed out 
by hfe life and death has been practiced by every independent nation that 
emerged from bondage. These men are not honoring his memory, but 
insulting it, who use his birthday to enable the orators of the Provin- 
cialists to preach as a cardinal doctrine of the nation's faith the restora- 
tion of some similar assembly to the festering nest of corruption that 
has made College Green to the Irish patriot what the Bastille was to the 
French Republicans. The frowning dungeon in Paris had enchained in 
its living tomb myriads of victims of tyranny ; glorious France arose in 
her might, and in her just indignation swept away this monster, this type 
of infamy. She razed the Bastille to the ground, not one stone was 
allowed to rest upon its fellow. These foul halls of tyranny in College 
Green, Dublin, that so often rang with invective and slanderous abuse 
against the gallant patriots of '98, where repeated coercion edicts were 
framed to scourge the nation ; these polluted chambers from where 
messages of sympathy and approval with red-handed assassination and 
pillage went forth ; where sat the friends and comrades of the brutal 
Yeomen of 1798, who were desolating the land with fire and sword, and 
whose merciless cruelties were indorsed in these halls of legislation by 
the associates and representatives of brutes who spared neither sex nor 
age in their horrible carnage — this building must be swept away. 
When Ireland shall arise in her might and re-establish her independence, 
this present abode of British money-changers, these halls typical of the 
infamy the nation once groaned under, shall, like the Bastille, be razed to 
the ground. Not one stone shall be left to mark the spot where a nation 
has been outraged by criminals who usurped the legislative functions of 
the people. Ireland must decide on which side rest her sympathies. Are 
they with her faithful sons, the patriots of 1798, or are they with their 
diabolic persecutors and destroyers, the Yeomen and representatives of 
the settler's Parliament ? 

The sons of a free Ireland will erect their own temple where the law- 
givers of the nation will sit — a temple pure and unsullied as the national 
faith, to be consecrated inside its sacred portals. 

After the death of Emmet there came upon the scene a great Irish- 
man, a giant in intellect and physique, and one of the most brilliant and 
gifted orators the Irish nation has produced. He had the rich vein of 
humor and the melting pathos of the Celt, filled with a riant and illimitable 
imagination. He could address his people in the rich mellow language 
of his race — a voice so thrilling and musical in its cadences, even when 
he spoke the stranger's tongue, that the pathos of each tone of soul- 
inspiring fervor lingered on the ear for hours. This man of almost 
immortal powers could at will move thousands of his countrymen to tears, 
and the next instant excite them to joyous and merry laughter. He 
could master and control the Irish heart as the great master Mozart 
inspired the organ. This great Irishman ran up and down the scale of 
their passions ; every semitone, every stop, beneath the magic of his touch, 
yielded its native music ; from the soft sweetness of the flute to the 
ringing tones of the clarion, down to the deepest diapason, he produced 
the full orchestration of their souls. He thrilled them with enthusiasm, 
inspiring the ecstatic applause that burst from the entranced masses at 
the end of one of his marvelous perorations. 

And yet this man, with almost godlike genius and gifts, inherited to 
the full the slavish curse of generations. His soul was steeped in slaveiy. 
Slavery circulated in his veins. Slavery haunted his noblest aspirations. 



NATIONALIST AND PROVINCIALIST. 9 

He not only bowed down before the British Gessler's cap ; he abased 
himself before that foreign symbol. He ate dirt and beslavered himself 
with ashes in the presence of the invader's insignia. His most exalted 
ambition for his nation was that she should be enslaved with chains of 
gold, or, as he termed it, be fastened to the robber's rule by the golden 
link of the Crown. The flag of Britain, which in Ireland is a pirate's 
banner, he recognized as his country's standard. The illegal measures 
passed by an alien assembly he recognized as law, and told his unhappy 
enslaved countrymen that he could at his pleasure drive a coach and six 
through any Act of the British Parliament. He even hugged this delusion 
to his heart after Blakeney's cannon at Clontarf had given him the lie. 

This great and prominent Irishman, in the possession of such wondrous 
powers, misused all these Heaven-sent gifts. He left his footprints on the 
sands of an enslaved nation's shore, to further aid her destroyer by the 
slavish doctrines he preached, and which he has left behind as a heritage 
of woe to his people. 

He was the father of the modern school of political thought in Ireland ; 
the creator of that abnormal movement in the history of nations which 
Nationalists call Provincialism, and Provincialists constitutional agitation. 

What is the meaning of the terms Nationalists and Provincialists, 
applied to Irishmen endeavoring to serve their country according to 
their best light ? Wherein lies the distinction ? 

The Nationalists are the men who believe that the only possible 
solution of the struggle with the British usurper is the absolute and 
complete independence of Ireland. They do not ignore the lessons of 
history by believing there is any stepping-stone or mid-position between 
subjection and liberty. As followers of Wolfe Tone, and Robert Emmet, 
as descendants of the men of 1798, they hope to place their country 
among the nations of the earth. They were nationalists who surrounded 
Miltiades at Marathon, when he gained his glorious victory over the hordes 
of Darius, the Persian monarch. They were nationalists, these heroic 
three hundred Spartans, who under the immortal Leonidas held Thermop- 
ylae for Hellas, when the hosts of Xerxes crossed the ridge of Anopia 
and died to preserve the imperishable glory of freedom for Greece. He 
was a nationalist, the Spartan Denekos, who hearing from a Trachian 
just before the battle that when the Persians shot their arrows the sun was 
darkened, answered back merrily : " Our friend from Trachios brings 
good news ; we Spartans love to fight in the shade." They were nation- 
alists upon whose tomb were inscribed : 

Tell the Spartans, at their bidding, 
Stranger, here in death we lie. 

They were nationalists who surrounded Scipio Africanus, when the 
Carthaginians crossed the Alps under the command of Hannibal and 
invaded the sacred soil of Rome. They were nationalists who retired to 
the temple of ^Esculapius, determined to die sooner than surrender to the 
Roman at the destruction of Carthage. They were nationalists who 
fought at Sempach for the independence of Switzerland, to free their 
native land from Austrian tyranny and who pierced their foemen's ranks, 
when that immortal nationalist, Arnold von Winkelried, opened a path 
for them over his dead body. William Tell proved his devotion to his 
country, and was a true nationalist, when he refused to do homage to the 
tyrant invader's insignia. They were nationalists who drove back the 
Danish invaders under Brian Boru at Clontarf. They were nationalists 
who opposed the invaders of their country, when, under the Saxon King 
Harold, they defeated the Norwegian Hardrada, and who afterward 
fought and died at Hastings, vainly battling to preserve the sacred soil 



io THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

of their country from Norman-French invasion. They were nationalists 
who fought for the liberty of Greece against the Turk ; the sacred band of 
Hetarists who died at Dragachan, and the half-armed peasants who 
attacked and conquered at Tripolizza, many of them having no weapons 
but bludgeons or attaghans. He was a brave nationalist, the valiant 
Greek, Marcus Bozzaro, who with three hundred Suliotes attacked the 
Turkish tyrant at Carpenisa, who addressing his men said : " If you lose 
sight of me during the combat, come and seek me in the Pasha's tent." 
They were nationalists who followed the Hungarian banner under Kossuth 
and Klapka. They were nationalists who charged at Arklow with Father 
Murphy and Miles Byrne, and who drove back the mercenaries of the 
British invader and the murderous Yeomen of the settlers' Parliament in 
College Green. They were nationalists who kept alive the sacred fire of 
patriotism through seven long centuries of horror in Ireland. And 
they were pure-souled nationalists who died upon the robber invader's 
gibbet, and to-day there are Irish nationalists suffering in the enemy's 
penal dungeons. They were nationalists who raised the standard of 
revolution and independence in revolt against tyranny at Lexington and 
Bunker Hill and who conquered at Yorktown. They were nationalists 
who fought the British invader before New Orleans. And he was a 
stanch nationalist, General Andrew Jackson, who, when asked what would 
he have done if defeated by the British, replied : " I would have retreated 
to the city, fired it, and fought the enemy amid its devouring flames." 
The American historian, speaking of this patriotic nationalist, General 
Andrew Jackson, gives a sad resume of British tyranny, beginning in Ire- 
land and continued in America during the Revolutionary War : " But as 
he contemplates the devastation that had swept his home and left him 
alone in the world, he remembered the hand that had wrought it all. His 
father had been driven from the land of his nativity by English oppression ; 
one brother had died on the battlefield nobly repelling English invasion ; 
another had sunk under English cruelty and barbarity ; and, last of all, 
the mother he loved more than life, had fallen a victim to English in- 
humanity and been buried in an unknown, unhonored grave, and no 
wonder "there became planted in his heart an inextinguishable hatred of 
the English nation. It had run up a long and bloody score, which, with 
the accumulated interest of years, that orphan boy was yet to wipe out 
with one terrible blow, which should cover the British Isle with mourn- 
ing." The Irish Nationalists, like General Jackson, owe the British 
invader a long and bloody score, which they feel it is their duty to pay 
off when and how they can. To destroy these invading assassins of their 
country is not only a duty — it has become a religion. This payment of the 
bloody score of centuries these assassins of Irishwomen and helpless 
children call " crime," and try to slander and dishonor the brave nation- 
alists before mankind. But the Nationalists feel it is their sacred duty to 
annihilate the invader when and how they can ; to use whatever weapons 
of destruction God and science can give them to repel these lawless 
usurpers. The Irish should exclaim with General Jackson that if 
defeated, they will retreat upon their towns and cities and fire them, 
fighting the bloodstained invader amid their devouring flames, shouting 
back to the foe the cry of Palafox and the brave Spanish nationalists at 
Saragossa, " No surrender! war to the knife." Such are the principles 
that animate the breasts of every patriotic Nationalist, and such are the 
heroisms and self-sacrifice attached to the word nationalist in the pages 
of history. 

Who are the Provincialists? We vainly search the pages of history 
to find the record of any similar movement to free a nation from bond- 
age. There exists no such record, it has been left to unhappy Ireland 



NATIONALIST AND PROVINCIALIST. n 

to evolve out of her generations of slavery this abnormal and impossible 
means of saving a people from destruction. For the first time in the 
history of mankind, it is taught in the public rostrum that nations can 
be freed by installments, and the masses are purposely confused by con- 
founding the evolution which agitation within a self-governed state may 
bring to develop public liberty, and the slavery and decay that must of 
necessity follow foreign invasion, more especially when the invaded 
country is governed from the nation that defiles its freedom and stains 
its shores with blood. Had William and his Norman-French hordegoverned 
the English from Normandy, and eventually made England an appan- 
age of the French Crown, draining the wealth and life blood of the nation 
for the benefit of France — if to suppose such a possibility were not to 
insult glorious, liberty-loving France — would Englishmen think such a 
state of degradation could be removed by agitation and slavish loyalty 
preached in the Parisian chambers ; that the occasional cry, " England 
is a nation," raised by one of their English delegates, receiving applause 
from his confreres, was serving the people in England ? All the time 
these ebullitions of mock patriotism went on, their country was bleeding 
beneath the heels of the foreign oppressor. Slavery would have greatly 
changed the English race if this could be ; it is more likely they would 
have surrendered their nationality and passed out of existence as a dis- 
tinct people, and become Frenchmen. 

Who has been the parent of this blighting and mocking degradation 
that has so enslaved the minds of Irishmen ? Provincialism has been the 
•creation of the great wizard of the tongue, the witching orator with such 
slavish fancy in his imagination — Daniel O'Connell. 

What are the principles of Provincialism ? The first article of the 
new creed is that it is expedient to compound a felony ; to make terms 
with the brutal destroyers of Ireland, her foreign usurpers ; to sink the 
nation into the degraded condition of a province of the enemy ; to 
accept her flag and her so-called imperial sway ; to lower forever the 
banner of green or else to degrade it to the position of a Provincial ensign, 
or as it has been placed to-day by Provincialists, the emblem of an 
enslaved metropolis, floating in mock freedom from the City Hall, Dub- 
lin, guarded by the armed red-coated soldiery of the invader ; for 
without the permission of the chiefs of this soldiery, this degradation 
would not even be permitted. The Provincialists hope by compromise 
to receive back some of their stolen property, and hence are willing to 
share in the crime. Even if this could by any possibility be accomplished 
it would be infamous ; it would be a base and treacherous surrender 
after seven centuries of unceasing struggle ; the expenditure of so much 
blood and treasure ; the sacrifice of millions of lives. The warm red 
life stream of the Irish flowed in such volumes that it could fill St. 
George's Channel with its gory current. Who can bridge this bloody 
chasm across, by promising obedience to the invader? The conscience 
of the nation would revolt at such treason, the sacrifice of generations of 
heroes who fought and died that Erin might become a free and inde- 
pendent nation would be fruitless. The widowed and the orphaned, 
the myriads whose homes were made desolate by the innumerable crimes 
of the invader, would shudder with horror at so sacrilegious an alliance. 
The dead, were it possible, would stalk abroad to point the finger of 
loathing at those men who would dare sell their birthright ; who could 
attempt to traffic in the honor of their ancestors, or try to obliterate from 
the glorious page of history the immortal and desperate struggles of a 
heroic, valiant, and ancient race, who, although their country has been 
invaded by succeeding hordes of British robbers, and overwhelmed 
beneath the weight of centuries of oppression, is not yet subjugated. 



12 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

What the enemy by every species of brutality could not do, treason 
or cowardice can never succeed in. Ireland will never become a willing 
province of the British Empire. But this policy of base surrender is 
impossible ; the enemy's interests are directly opposed to granting the smallest 
real concession, and these men are playing with treason toward their 
nation without one gleam of hope that they can be possibly successful ; 
they are hedged in and surrounded by hypocrisy, fraud, and lies ; the 
atmosphere they breathe is destructive to Irish national life — it is impreg- 
nated with the poison of British treachery, British deceit, and British 
avarice. 

These Provincialists have taught the Irish people, and endeavored 
to make them believe it, that they are powerless and helpless before the 
might of Britain. The power of the enemy and the weakness of the 
Irish nation have been exaggerated to sustain this debasing doctrine of 
accepting slavery as inevitable, only to be removed by the generosity 
of the conqueror. In trying to make the Irish people firm believers in 
this degrading creed, they used arguments which in part might have 
been used by Nationalists. They denounced British rule, and yet they 
struggled to make Ireland continue a part of the British Empire. They 
ignored Britain's idea of her own interests, and spoke of the generosity 
of one or other of the British parties, while they denounced the British 
nation. What an unheard of incongruity in solving an international 
issue ! 

" There is a theory for everything which proclaims itself common 
sense ; mediation offered between the true and the false ; explanation, 
admonition, a somewhat haughty extenuation which, because it is a 
mixture of blame and excuse, thinks itself wisdom and is often only 
pedantry. An entire political school, called the compromise school, has 
sprung from this. Between cold water and warm water, this is the 
party of tepid water. This school, with its pretended depth, wholly 
superficial, which dissects effects without going back to the causes, from 
the height of a half-science chides and condemns the approach or 
appearance of revolution." 

The Irish people, fascinated by the eloquence of their great leader, 
Daniel O'Connell, followed him in thousands, always believing he would 
give the word for action, even when he loudly protested and used that 
extraordinary statement denying the truth of sacred and of profane 
history: "That the liberty of a nation was not worth the shedding of 
a single drop of human blood." But at first among his followers and 
afterward as a distinct party came a body of younger and bolder spirits, 
that with no wavering or hesitation told their countrymen the truth. 
These patriots were termed the " Young Ireland Party " ; foremost among 
them and foremost among all Irish patriots, since the days of Wolfe 
Tone, were Davis and Mitchell. To these Nationalists of this Young 
Ireland school are the present generation of Irishmen indebted for 
many of the brave men who tried to aid their suffering land during the 
past quarter of a century. Their writings thrilled the Irish heart and 
illumined the Irish brain ; this generation, alas ! leaves none to succeed 
them. The Provincialist movement, which was thought to be dead 
with the break up of the Tenant Right Party in 1852, was resuscitated by 
the Irish Episcopalians at Dublin in 1870, some with truly honorable 
motives, others smarting under the then recent disestablishment of their 
Church. A great Irish orator and lawyer, Isaac Butt, became its leader. 
Irish Nationalists, although they did not join its ranks, hoped it would 
help to make all Ireland more anti-British. It languished for a while 
and fell to pieces from the necessity forced upon such movements to 
adopt a tone hostile to true Irish national aspirations. Before it passed 



NATIONALIST AND PROVINCIALIST. 13 

away there came into political life Charles Stewart Parnell, who has since 
occupied the foremost position in the Irish Provincial struggle. 

The leader of the third Provincial Irish movement was aided at the 
outset by one of Ireland's perennial scourges, a famine. That is, the 
failure of one particular crop, and although there was a reduction in the 
general produce, there was more than enough left to feed the people 
but for the destructive, illegal edicts of the invader, who governed and 
plundered the Irish nation by the red hand of force. It will be the 
task of this history to trace this Provincial movement from its inception 
to the present hour (September, 1887). 

This movement tried to combat with the invader by words, but 
behind these the Irish people expect to see something more practical 
than arguments. The Nationalists admired the leader of the Provincial 
movement, for his energy and the whole-souled manner with which he 
threw himself into the breach to try to aid his starving fellow-country- 
men ; although the leader tried to do this by altering the illegal edicts 
made by a foreign Parliament, there was that about him which led many 
men to believe that when he saw the folly of his course he would adopt 
the National programme. Whether they were correct in their surmises, 
and that a brief dream of heroic and determined nationality came and 
passed away, posterity alone will be able to determine. 

The Nationalists in bodies joined his movement, aided him in every 
possible way, and made the Provincial movement the most perfect organi- 
zation of its kind ever seen before. The enemy grew alarmed, and not 
knowing what to think, forced the issue by a brutal and bitter persecution. 
The enemy at this period was called Liberal, and most liberal was he in 
his despotism, hanging, stabbing Irish women to death, and brutally slaugh- 
tering even Irish children. Men and women were arrested and imprisoned 
without even the semblance of an accusation, or even the mockery of a 
so-called trial. It was open red-handed tyranny and murder. 

There was but one tuay to meet this Liberal tyrant, one path alone left a 
nation possessing a single spark of true manhood. On this subject this 
history will speak. " // was the future entering on the scene; a future as 
yet unknown." 

The Liberal leader Gladstone carried on his bitter persecution ; this 
was boldly met by manly words from the Provincial leader Parnell. The 
whole Irish race was moved to its inmost depths. Gladstone arrested 
Parnell ; the crisis was forced by the Briton. A short dream of manly 
opposition, left unsupported, and afterward denounced, was Ireland's 
physical answer. A compromise which was a surrender was the sequel 
to the wanton and arbitrary arrest of the Irish Provincial leader. The 
cowardly surrender, called the Kilmainham treaty, was the beginning of 
the end ; but the turning point of the struggle was over, the decadence 
had set in, and the surrender was as abject as it was degrading. 

When the mist of fraud and misconception is removed from before her 
eyes, Ireland will speak to these Provincialists in some such language 
as the wife of Asdrubal, the Carthaginian general, addressed to her 
recreant husband : " May the gods of Erin and thou, O Britain, in con- 
cert with them, punish according to their deserts they who betrayed their 
country, their gods, their kindred ! " 

British rule in Ireland is one of the most extraordinary anomalies in 
the history of modern times. It has been and is the most masterly 
hypocrisy known to history. A nation through its great and learned men 
— as is witnessed to-day in Britain and has been glaringly apparent in 
Ireland during the Liberal regime from 1880 to 1885 — preaching public 
virtue and practicing the most vicious cruelties ! A nation that has es- 
poused patriotic aspirations all over Europe except in Ireland, where the 



14 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

whip and the halter are its apostles ! British sympathies were with the 
Greek Heterists and Alexander Ipsilanti, their leader, in their war against 
the Turk. British ships in concert with the war vessels of other European 
powers destroyed the Ottoman fleet at Navarino, which materially aided 
the Greeks in throwing off the yoke of the barbarous Moslems. Their 
sympathies were with the Belgians in their war for independence. When 
France by her cannon and her fleet besieged Antwerp, the last fortress 
held in Belgium for the King of Holland, British war ships aided in the 
bombardment. British sympathies were with Kossuth and Klapka in 
Hungarian struggles for liberty. They were with Mazzini, Garibaldi, 
and " Young Italy" against the Austrian. 

How, then, do they face the Irish question — the independence of an 
ancient nation, which has suffered and is suffering more agony and torture 
than these once enslaved peoples did from their conquerors, for which 
British pity was so freely offered ? In Ireland starvation accompanies 
slavery and degrading tyranny, the most cunning cruelty allied to the 
basest hypocrisy. This hypocrisy has been carried to the highest pinnacle 
of audacity; it proclaims itself from the mountain tops as an effort of 
the British Liberals to undo the past and confer native rule on Ireland. 
The nations look on with awe, wonderment, and respect, and the liberty 
loving peoples of the earth cry aloud " Hosanna! " to the name of William 
Ewart Gladstone. 

This English statesman is preaching the most generous and liberal of 
doctrines, advocating the emancipation of a nation which he admits to be 
most cruelly and wrongfully treated by his country, and for these admis- 
sions of wrong and promises of atonement, he has been assailed by such 
of his own countrymen who are his opponents in British partisan politics. 
But not these alone, the most liberal and advanced British thinkers and 
statesmen (using that word liberality from a British standpoint) who have 
hitherto been his associates in political life and members of the same 
Administration, these men have joined the Tories in denouncing Glad- 
stone's policy as most ruinous to British interests and destructive to the 
unity and stability of the empire. In proportion to the assaults of Mr. 
Gladstone's enemies and their loud condemnation of his policy, so are 
the Irish Provincialists on the other hand in the same proportion equally 
overjoyed, or appear to be, at the great measure offered by Mr. Gladstone 
and rejected by his British opponents. What wonder if the Irish people 
were filled with hope, and that mankind was confirmed in the belief that 
this Liberal statesman was really in earnest ! 

But, when we go to verify the reason for this great confidence in 
Ireland's ex-coercer, by examining the Bill upon which is built up both the 
faith of a section of the Irish people and the hostility of British Tories and 
Unionists ; when the searcher after truth comes to examine this measure 
which with the most monstrous effrontery has been foisted on mankind as 
a measure to confer Home Rule — i. e., self government — upon Ireland, he 
finds by the most cursory glance that there is nothing mystified, compli- 
cated, or difficult to comprehend. He who runs may read : he finds that 
all the infamies and tyrannies belonging to British rule in Ireland are 
legalized, compressed, and comprised into two clauses which create a 
despot to govern the Irish nation — a man who would be controlled by 
neither Parliament nor Irish public opinion. Ireland, by this infamous 
and insulting Bill, was to be placed under the irresponsible rule of one 
man, who was to have been alike law-giver and judge. By whose single 
mandate the nation would have to endure whatever tyrannies or coercions 
he dared inflict. And yet this fearful and most outrageous insult has 
been borne in silence by men for whom this exposure of the truth is not 
palatable. This crowning act of infamy is dealt by an English statesman 



NATIONALIST AND PROVINCIALIST. 15 

from off whose tongue fall words of seeming kindness and apparent friend- 
ship, words which enrage his own countrymen, who bitterly assail him as a 
renegade to their interests. No one appears to have taken even a glance 
at this hideous mockery — the Act of coercion and crime, which is with 
Mephistophelian humor termed "A Home Rule Bill." And there before 
the world stands this great Englishman, full of years, ripe in wisdom, over- 
flowing with benevolence to the human family, receiving the adulation 
and worship of his numerous admirers ; but he who has read this product 
of his brain and knows how a suffering and enslaved nation hangs with 
hope upon its eventually passing that British Legislature in the firm belief, 
as they have been told time and again, it would remove their shackles ; he 
who has read this Bill and knows all this, pointing to this aged British 
Minister will say: "There stands the Incarnation of Deceit and Hypocrisy." 
Violating pledges is the uniform and unchanging career of every English 
Minister, for this is quite a picture of alien rule in Ireland since first the 
foreigner invaded that country. From the very first time that a portion of 
the inhabitants of Britain planted their feet upon the Irish soil as invaders 
to this year of grace, their career has been one of bloodshed and treachery. 
The Goths, the Vandals, nor the Tartars have not been so brutal in their 
lust of conquest nor in their rapacities and fiendish cruelties as this 
nation of hypocrites which has pursued unceasing a war of extermination 
in Ireland. And while this arch-hypocrite, Ireland's ex-coercer, the 
Liberal chieftain, is preaching his hollow platitudes, which appear to- 
deceive mankind, the steady work of extirpation goes on unceasingly in 
Ireland. In spite of the natural increase of the race the population is 
steadily declining from fifty to fifty-five thousand yearly : a destruction 
greater than the most bloody revolution could inflict ; and this is what 
Britain calls peace. These so-called Liberals are profiting by the aid 
which their new alliance gives to them, in keeping the Irish Nationalists 
quiet while this fearful destruction continues, which would seem to pre- 
sage the removal of the Irish people from their native land. While this 
havoc goes on the British Liberals keep promising loudly that they mean 
to emancipate the Irish people. And newspapers written by freemen in 
this glorious republic profess to admire the peaceful attitude assumed 
by the Irish people in Ireland while this enormous drain is depopulating 
their island, and this policy of resting satisfied at denouncing the Tories, 
while national death is rapidly looming in sight, is frequently spoken of 
in some such terms as these : "The admirable behavior of the Irish under 
the pressure of tyranny to which they have been subjected shows their 
fitness for self-government, and the intelligent consideration which the 
English people and the great Liberal party is about to accord them is a 
sign that is full of promise for both countries." Such articles as this are 
written for the descendants of the patriots at Lexington and the heroes 
of Bunker Hill to read. And Irish Provincialists who have misled the 
great American nation call such expressions "American sympathy." If 
the attitude of the Irish people to-day is worthy of respect and proves 
their fitness for self-government, then the action of the heroes of the 
American revolution is to be condemned, and should, to follow out a 
parity of reasoning, prove their incapacity to rule themselves. This belief 
in the dignity of doing nothing has been spread broadcast by the Irish 
Provincialists and their Liberal allies ; what wonder if freemen in the 
United States, immersed in their own politics and business, give it a hasty 
indorsement by the use of some such utterances ! The Nationalists do 
not believe in this fitness for self-government by idly standing by while 
the enemy destroys their people ; their motto is or was, " Bear any arms- 
you can sooner than live in slavish submission to the enemies of your 
country and your race." 



16 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Look at the Irish people and their treatment by their hereditary 
enemies, a treatment which has been unmitigated and unchanged through 
every succeeding tyrannic Ministry, whether Liberals or Tories. Mur- 
der and Pillage stalked abroad, assuming in mockery the name of law. 
Look into the pages of history and see them considered a degraded caste, and 
pursued by the malevolence of their enemy to the shores of this republic, 
gloating over the vices that by a devilish system of poverty and ignorance 
are the Briton's own deliberate creation — vices he had implanted in those 
unfortunate serfs that are descended from an ancient and noble race. 
Look at them through the penal years and since without one solitary 
guarantee for life, religion, or property. The only hope during these penal 
days held out to those who wished to escape from this intolerable yoke was 
in denying the faith of their fathers. There is not an Irishman t©-day who 
passed his years in his native land and attained the age of manhood, but 
has in some measure felt the iron sway of the island of Britain and has had 
to bend his proud soul beneath the rod of British oppression. 

Pestilence and famine have been the chief engines of war of the foe, 
but the bayonet, the bullet, the buckshot, and the gallows have not been 
forgotten, as the towns of Ireland, which have been stained with the blood 
of her people shed by the instruments of foreign assassins, can testify. 

To-day Ireland has another infliction added to foreign rule, and that 
is the false teachings of the Provincialists, who have receded from their 
alliance with the Nationalists and thrown themselves into the arms of their 
former bitter enemies, Ireland's ex-coercers. So great has been this 
deception that it seems hopeless to assail it. This alliance, created over a 
pool of blood, has blinded the great masses of the Irish people. The Bill 
called Home Rule has never been discussed on its merits ; light would be 
ruinous to its Irish supporters, and possibly the majority of even the mem- 
bers of the enemy's Parliament are unacquainted with its provisions. It 
is impossible to estimate this perverse ignorance. It would seem as if 
Gladstone and Parnell had issued a Proclamation — " The thing called 
human intelligence is suppressed." 

To try and let the light on this appears a superhuman task ; there are 
obstacles confronting him who would dare attempt it, that appear power- 
ful enough to crush him. Vials of wrath, misrepresentation, and slander 
to face, that would appear impossible to overcome, and an alliance solid as 
granite, a falsehood made to appear as the truth, graven on the hearts of 
mankind. It is indeed a giant task to attempt to assail this, but we 
may be able to speak of this unnatural alliance between the British Lib- 
eral and Irish Provincial leader, by partly assimilating and adopting 
the utterances of a great and illustrious leader in the path of human 
progress. 

" We are in Russia ; the Neva is frozen over ; houses are built on the 
ice, and heavy chariots roll over it. 'Tis no longer water, but rock ; the 
people flock up and down the marble which was once a river. A town 
is run up, streets are made, shops opened, people buy, sell, eat, drink, 
sleep, light fires on what was once water. You can do what you please 
there, fear nothing. Laugh, dance ; 'tis more solid than terra firma. 
Why it sounds beneath the foot like granite. Hurrah for the winter ! 
Hurrah for the ice ! This will last till doomsday ! And look up at the 
sky ; is it day ? is it night ? what is it ? A dull wan light drags over the 
snow ; Why the sun is dving ! " 

No, thou are not dying, O Liberty ! One of these days at the moment 
when thou art least expected, in the hour when they shall have most 
utterly forgotten thee, thou wilt rise dazzling ! thy radiant face will sud- 
denly be seen issuing from the earth resplendent on the horizon ! Over 
all the snow, over all that ice, over that hard white plain, over that water 



NATIONALIST AND PROVINCIALIST. 17 

become rock, over that villainous winter of treason and slavery, thou 
wilt cast thy arrows of gold, thy ardent and refulgent ray ! light, heat, 
life, and then listen ! hear you that murmuring sound ? hear you that 
cracking noise, so widespread and so formidable ? 'Tis the breaking up 
of the ice ! 'tis the melting of the Neva ! 'tis the river resuming its 
course ! 'tis the water, living, joyous, and terrible, upraising the hideous 
dead ice, and smashing it. "'Twas granite," said you ; see, it splinters 
like 'glass ! 'tis the breaking up of the ice, I tell you ; 'tis the truth re- 
turning ; tis the light of progress bursting on the Irish nation. They 
behold that the infamy of this alliance with the men of Belmullet, and 
Ballina, is no less impious than would be a union with the men of 
Mitchelstown. 'Tis the truth resuming its sway, the breaking to pieces 
and burying fathoms deep and forever this iniquitious alliance between 
Ireland's despots and destroyers and Ireland's representatives. 

And for this immense engulfment, this supreme victory of life over 
death, what was needed ? one of thy glories, O Sun ! one of thy rays, 
O Liberty ! 

Oh, my country ! It is at this moment when I see you bleeding, 
inanimate, your head hanging, your eyes closed, your mouth open, and 
no words issuing therefrom ; the mark of the whip upon your shoulders, 
the nails of the excutioners' shoes impressed upon your body, naked and 
sullied, and like a thing deprived of life, object of hatred, of derision. 
Alas ! it is at this moment, my country, that the heart of the exile over- 
flows with love and respect for you ! 



CHAPTER II. 

(1868 to 1874.) 
HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 

Ireland from the Formation of the Federalist Home Government Association to the 
Public Appearance of Charles Stewart Parnell — Waiting for the Long Looked for 
Time — Absence of National Teaching — Remarkable Speeches of Mr. Gladstone — 
Mr. Gladstone's Coercion in Ireland — His Challenge to John Martin — Execution of 
Pierce Nagle, the Fenian Traitor — Account of his Treason — His Death in London — 
Great Home Rule Conference in Dublin, November, 1873 — Federalist Programme 
Formulated by the Conference — Approaching General Election. 

On January 24, 1874, William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister of 
Great Britain, dissolved Parliament and appealed to his country to 
indorse his administration. 

His Government was defeated in the election which ensued and the 
incoming Premier, Mr. Disraeli, included among his appointments to 
office Colonel Taylor, one of the British members of Parliament for the 
County Dublin. The succeeding by-election brought to the public gaze 
a young Irishman who has written his name in strangely varied char- 
acters on the page of his country's history. 

This young man, who opposed the re-election of Colonel Taylor 
for the Metropolitan Irish county, stood as a candidate of the Federal- 
ist Home Rule movement under the leadership of Mr. Isaac Butt, and 
was ushered into political life with great promise by the Provincialists, 
who were then active in Ireland. It had been circulated in both Nation- 
alist and Provincialist circles that he was a sincere and devoted Irish- 
man, prepared to make any sacrifice for the advancement and progress 
of his native land. 

The Provincialists were appealed to by the memory of his grand- 
uncle, who sat in the Settler's Parliament House, College Green, to give 
him their united support, and the Nationalists were reminded of his 
maternal grandfather, Commodore Stewart of the American Navy, the 
gallant Irish-American officer who so daringly attacked the British war 
vessels with his single ship. It was a long and protracted fight (a 
tale which the Irish loved to hear) ; the superiority of the British arma- 
ment was more than counterbalanced by Commodore Stewart's splendid 
seamanship and the heroic valor of the American sailors. Stewart 
maneuvered his frigate with such rapidity that he outsailed the enemy. # 
Pouring broadside after broadside into the hulls and rigging of the 
British ships, raking them fore and aft until their lee scuppers ran with 
blood, and amid the cheers of the American seamen the boasted Miss- 
tress of the Seas had to lower her flag to the glorious Stars and Stripes 
of the Young Republic. 

When Commodore Stewart was entertaining with genuine American 
hospitality his prisoners, the British captains, the senior of these officers 
accused his comrade of unskilled seamanship, which was, as he said, the 
cause of their misfortunes. In heaping reproaches on his junior, the 
British captain insisted that if his orders had been obeyed the American 
ship would have been their prize, and that Commodore Stewart would 
have changed places with them and have been their prisoner. The fiery 

18 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 19 

American officer arose and said : " Gentlemen, put your crews on board, 
and by we will fight the battle over again." 

This description of this celebrated naval engagement, fought during 
the War of 1812-14 between Britain and the United States, which 
reflected such honor and renown upon Mr. Parneil's grandfather, was 
circulated among the Nationalists, and many stories of Mr. Parneil's 
National leanings created an enthusiasm which no ordinary recruit to the 
ranks of the Provincialists could evoke. They expected in a little time, 
when Charles Stewart Parnell had studied the Irish difficulty with her 
invader, that he would be found in the forefront of the National ranks, 
and like Wolfe Tone, of glorious and immortal memory, doing battle 
against the oppressors of his enslaved country ; such were the hopes at 
that time centered in the grandson of heroic old Ironsides. Whether he 
crossed the Rubicon that divided the agitator from the patriot, and feel- 
ing that the weight of the armor was not equaled by the strength of his man- 
hood, and so retreated back — whether this is so or not, this generation is 
not likely to be enlightened. He himself repudiates it, and with scorn 
and loathing, as if he thought that to be ranked among the immortals who 
died for their country was a disgrace. Nationalists think that his associ- 
ation with the vile enemies of his motherland is the act of a British 
politician, and is regarded by patriots as degrading ; this alliance with 
men whose hands are red with the blood of the murdered Irish women 
and children, wantonly slain in perpetuation of a foreign system of 
infamy. 

The County Dublin had been for years misrepresented by Tories of the 
old school in the enemy's Parliament in London. The then sitting mem- 
bers, Colonel Taylor and Ion Trant Hamilton, looked upon the Parlia- 
mentary seats of Dublin County as heirlooms in their respective families. 
Mr. Hamilton had lately succeeded his father, who sat in the London 
Parliament as member for the Irish Metropolitan county to within a short 
period of his death. 

The announcement that Mr. Parnell was to contest the County Dublin 
in opposition to Colonel Taylor, who looked upon his unopposed return as a 
matter of course, caused some indignation in Tory circles, more especially 
as this neophyte for Parliamentary honors advocated the new school of 
politics called Home Rule. He was considered to be by right a Conser- 
vative, and these people looked upon his conduct as most reprehensible. 
At this time he was High Sheriff of the County Wicklow, an elected 
member of the Protestant Church synods, and being also a landlord, the 
Tories were horrified at his alliance with the Federalist Provincial party. 

Much anxiety was evinced in Irish circles to see and hear the new 
candidate, and on the night of his first public appearance a crowded hall 
greeted him. Mr. Isaac Butt introduced him to the audience with one of 
those brilliant flashes of eloquence of which he was master. As Mr. 
Parnell came forward, there was seen a young man, with dark brown eyes, 
who gazed intently at the crowded house before him, as if his soul was in 
the glance that scanned that sea of faces — grave and pensive, with light 
brown full beard and tall slender figure, which appeared slightly stooped. 
The audience broke forth into an enthusiastic greeting — it was the homage 
of the warm-hearted Celt tendered to the descendant of a man whose 
record as a brave sailor fighting the enemies of his country is on the 
pages of history. 

Mr. Parnell acknowledged this splendid reception with icy manner, 
but with dignity. He appeared extremely nervous, and delivered his 
exordium in low tones and with some hesitation, but as his speech pro- 
gressed and the subject grew upon him he became more at ease. With- 
out displaying any promise of oratorical powers, he spoke as a man of 



20 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

deep thought — one with a profound conviction that there could be no 
social or material prosperity in Ireland without self-government. 

After the close of the public meeting, Mr. Isaac Butt introduced to 
him several well-known Irishmen who were present, and whenever Mr. 
Butt indulged in any facetious pleasantries, as was his wont when with 
friends, giving extraordinary characters in the Irish cause to some men 
whom he presented to Mr. Parnell, a quiet smile was seen for an instant 
on the young man's face, which disappeared as quickly. His eyes evinced 
no corresponding sympathy; they looked coldly and inquiringly around. 
In conversation he showed thorough knowledge of the political situation, 
as that of a man who had given deep study to Parliamentary warfare and 
party politics. His strong dislike to the English Liberals, as dangerous 
and hypocritical in their dealings with Ireland, was most marked. He 
believed that any entangling alliance with them meant the decadence and 
speedy dissolution of any Irish party who would so betray their trust as 
to coquette with these men. As to the Tories, their open and undisguised 
hostility was of such a nature that it precluded all possible thought of 
any alliance with them, consequently they were not so much to be feared. 
In Irish affairs they were always the weaker government of the two. 
The Liberal party, when in opposition, hampered the coercive tendencies 
of the Tories, but when in power, became unscrupulous and tyrannic 
despots in their government of Ireland. He used no superfluous words, 
but left the impression on his hearers that he thought out each sentence 
as he delivered it. 

This distinction between Tories and Liberals has always been, since 
Provincialism was first called into being by O'Connell, a cardinal article 
of its political creed. These men completely forget that in all foreign 
questions and conquests, these parties were rivals only for the greater 
benefit of the British nation, and that to surrender the government of Ire- 
land to the inhabitants of that island was, and always must be, opposed to 
their interests and hence impossible. They never could be satisfied in 
their convictions, and people will say, reasonably so, that if Ireland was to 
get such control as she is asking in a very quiet and persistent manner, in 
spite of all the denials and rebuffs the enemy gives her, that another 
generation, growing strong by the power conceded, would not throw off 
even the Federal tie. But to this the Provincialist will reply that the 
British army will be there to prevent any such violation of the contract, 
and that it would be impossible. This reply, so often given before to 
similar queries, illustrates fully the idea the Provincialist holds of national 
self-government, when foreign soldiers in the pay and under the control 
of a foreign ministry would continue to garrison Ireland. 

Mr. Parnell was defeated ; the franchise, at that time so limited, was 
in the possession of the Tories and Whigs, who voted solidly against the 
Federal programme. A small number of the Nationalists supported Mr. 
Parnell with the hope that in a short time he would himself give his 
services to the National cause. But the great majority, who believed it 
as an admission of the foreigner's right in usurping the government of 
their country, refused to vote — as they had always — for any man to mock 
them by his presence in the enemy's Legislature, where he was powerless 
to serve his country, and only humiliated the nation by the studied con- 
tempt or insults with which the enemy's deputies treated him if he 
even had the semblance of Provincialism. Had the Irish nation been 
advanced enough in its political education to elect men to stay at home, 
these Nationalists would then both vote and work at each election. This 
National principle not to vote is still a part of the political creed of 
numbers of Nationalists. There are men in Ireland who proudly boast 
that they never sullied their National faith by voting for any deputy 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 21 

going to London, to whine and beg to Ireland's enemies for the restora- 
tion of her stolen nationality. During the remarkable election of 1885, 
the Provincialists foolishly believed in English deceit and hypocrisy — 
the Tory played the hypocrite — and expected to get self-government. 
In all the counties where the enemy's deputies had no possible chance of 
election, men were glad to be able to preserve intact their steadfast cus- 
tom of refusing to go to the polls, and yet not injure Mr. Parnell's over 
sanguine hopes. In Tipperary County alone more than one-third of the 
voters absented themselves from the ballot-box. 

Mr. Butt was pleased with the manly attitude of Mr. Parnell, and 
promised at the first vacancy in any constituency with what they called 
National tendencies Mr. Parnell should receive the united support of 
the party. 

What was the condition of Ireland when Mr. Parnell came on the 
scene ? The decay and decline of her population, somewhat arrested 
during the revolutionary period, 1865, 1866, and 1867, had set in with 
steady persistence — a decline in population that should teach the leaders 
that the hour to strike the foe is passing away from them fast, if they 
mean to try and arrest this steady emigration that must soon exhaust the 
vitality of the nation. 

The Nationalists, although somewhat disorganized at the inability 
and incompetency of their leaders to put them in the field — with which 
this history will deal later — were reorganized, but the absence of a healthy 
National literature and the spread of Provincialist teaching was doing 
serious mischief. In addition to this, the best intellects of Ireland had 
ceased to work in the National ranks ; both at home and in America they 
found themselves having so often to defend their own honor against the 
calumnies of brainless men, that they retired from the contest in despair. 
That curse of faction, which is a part of every enslaved race, was giving 
aid to the enemy, and men who would have shed luster on the movement 
were deterred from joining by the incompetent men, although sincere 
patriots, who conducted the movement in some districts. But the masses 
of the people, ever honest and faithful to Ireland, enrolled themselves in 
the ranks of the Nationalists. These simple-minded men felt satisfied 
that this was their duty to their country, but without leaders of ability or 
breadth of mind sufficient to grasp the situation they could do nothing. 
The Revolutionary movement became an opportunist organization, 
waiting — while the nation was being depleted by thousands every year, 
?nore than the enemy could kill or put hors-de-combat in a war for inde- 
pendence — waiting for Heaven to perform some miracle by which they 
hoped to take the field. 

There was no healthy national teaching, no books written, no lectures 
delivered — except by Provincialists, on Ireland's wrongs, which the men in 
Ireland are a daily witness to — no spreading broadcast that true national 
faith among the masses who needed light and education, no teaching of 
the great question so hidden or darkened by the enemy, and so distorted 
by the Provincialists. While all these were lacking, the natural instincts 
of the people and the remarkable patriotism of even the uneducated left 
Ireland much room for hope, if Providence had only supplied her with 
brave and intelligent leaders. 

The British enemy had learned to fear them — the next step to respect. 
Hitherto it had been indifference or contempt. Soon it became that 
healthier feeling of hate. The Manchester rescue and the Clerkenwell 
explosion had irritated and annoyed the English people. So long as this 
war was confined to Ireland they did not care, but when the tragic inci- 
dents of the struggle became enacted at their own door, even the mighty 
metropolis of London itself, John Bull became seriously alarmed. 



22 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

An unreasoning panic, a universal national fright, upset the usual 
equanimity of the stolid Englishman. Every conceivable atrocity was 
attributed to the Fenians. 

Mr. Gladstone's attention was drawn to the conditions of Ireland by 
the desperate action of the Fenian Nationalists, and needing a cry to go 
to the country, he appealed to the English people to disestablish the 
Episcopalian Church in Ireland. It drew large revenues from the Crown 
and from glebe lands in Ireland set apart for its maintenance, and in 
many districts in the south of Ireland the worshipers who attended the 
churches consisted of scarce a dozen souls. It was the church of an insig- 
nificant portion of the people, so far as numbers were concerned, but its 
communicants were all the wealthy landlords and the aristocratic pro- 
British portion of the population. It might be thought that men of such 
high station and great wealth could well afford to sustain their Church 
without state aid, particularly as the poor persecuted peasant supported 
his church, which flourishe'd in wealth and magnificence. Some of the 
most beautiful Gothic churches sprung up over the island, with handsome 
and expensive altars, imported from Munich and other foreign homes of 
ecclesiastical art, all built and supported on the voluntary system. For 
a nation steeped in poverty and every decade seeking alms before the 
world, it is the most extraordinary feature of the Irish character ; their 
piety and devotion to their faith is unexampled in the history of peoples. 

Mr. Gladstone, when he set out on his crusade against the Established 
Church, aroused powerful and influential interests, and all the Irish rebels 
of wealth and station, every aristocratic Irish traitor, who was disloyal to 
his country and loyal to her enemy and invader, was up in arms and 
hostile to Mr. Gladstone's attack, as they termed it, on their Church. The 
question assumed gigantic proportions in England. And a vast number 
of the people, knowing or caring very little about Irish grievances, and 
being strong partisans, took Mr. Gladstone's statements for granted facts, 
considered they were about to do Ireland great service, and confer upon 
her a substantial benefit by removing what they were told was an incubus 
on the nation, and one that retarded very seriously Irish happiness. 
Whether Mr. Gladstone believed the extraordinary speeches he delivered 
at this time it is impossible to say. 'It is self-evident that these state- 
ments are the stock in trade of English politicians and statesman, given 
before the world as sublime sentiments at suitable periods, whenever the 
policy of a particular party needs them. The Irish trouble has drawn 
from English Ministers a fair sprinkling of hollow sentiments, and a good 
deal of rant, possibly believed for the time by the speaker, as a first class 
actor in simulating a character loses himself in the impersonation, so that 
the applause given to the British statesmen, more especially to that remark- 
able man, William Ewart Gladstone, has the same ground for its approval. 
The Minister of England speaking of Ireland's woes is like the artist 
before the footlights: both are admirably simulating a character, and the 
more naturally they delineate the original, the more perfect are they each 
in his art. The role of the Minister is to pose as the friend, the lover, and 
the giver of good things to Ireland. To speak of any of these British meas- 
ures as conveying any real or substantial benefits is to state what every 
Irishman who cares to study the subject knows to be wrong. Ireland has 
not been benefited in the smallest manner by any of these many acts of 
the British Parliament. There is nothing complicated in the Irish trouble, 
no real mystery or scientific study, to give that admirable actor, William 
Ewart Gladstone, such splendid opportunities to talk for hours, twisting and 
intertwining a knot which he started out with the view of unraveling until 
his bewildered auditors — not in any manner understanding the question, 
but who were in a vague way impressed with the fact that Ireland complains 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 23 

of something, and admiring the patience and benevolence of their great 
and learned countryman — they at this time cried out, " By all means 
satisfy these troublesome Irish, disestablish the Episcopalian Church, and 
let them cease brawling." There is no complication whatever in Ireland's 
demand — that is, the national demand — not that of time-serving, selfish 
politicians. What the nation needs is as plain as noonday, as clear as the 
running brooks glistening in God's sunshine: The island of Ireland to 
be left in the complete and actual possession of her people, the British in- 
vaders to pack up and leave it bag and baggage, to take their officials, 
their army, their navy, and all the impedimenta of their execrable rule, 
and go home to their island of Britain, leaving the two islands as separate 
and distinct politically as they left the hands of the Great Creator. Two 
separate nations inhabited by as distinct a people, as foreign to each 
other in habits, in tastes, in genius, and ability as any two distinct races 
on the globe. All the statesmen that ever sat at a council board, all the 
philosophers of antiquity or the leading lights of science in our day, not 
even the most pious, most holy, and most learned fathers of all the creeds, 
could, if all united in one congress, satisfactorily settle this difference 
between these two islands in the west of Europe in any other manner. 

The Irish Church was no financial grievance to the people whatever ; 
it was simply the badge of serfdom, or rather one of its badges, and so 
long as the nation groaned beneath the weight of foreign oppression 
what emblems they bore upon their banner of tyranny made no material 
difference to the unemployed, poverty-stricken people of Ireland. 

This great agitation took place in the autumn of 1868. The Irish 
Church, then so much spoken of, had been an intolerable and serious 
grievance. When the produce of the soil was seized and sold for the 
payment of tithes, then the farmer felt the monstrous injustice of support- 
ing a Church to which he did not belong ; but this direct levying of the 
tithes had been removed more that thirty years previous. This Church 
was practically disestablished so far as the Irish people's interests were 
directly influenced in 1837. Since that period no Irish peasant paid one 
penny in support of the Episcopalian Church. 

This was brought about by the use of the only weapons which Britain, 
like every other conquering power, will listen to, namely : force, or the 
fear of force. Provincialists who are preaching in Ireland to-day passive 
resistance or peaceful plans of campaign, are deaf to the lessons of his- 
tory. Some few of them no doubt are sincere, but how shallow must 
their reasoning powers be when this is admitted. The Irish peasants had 
a great Provincialist at their head at this time, a man of superior ability, 
Daniel O'Connell ; but not all the passive resistance or plans of cam- 
paign that could be devised by the most ingenious could stay the tithe 
demand, like to-day with the land tax called rent ; it was pay or be sold 
out. Goaded by the small tyranny of the proctors the people rushed to 
arms, and their weapons were principally scythes. The armed forces of 
the enemy and the people came into collision, much bloodshed followed ; 
and the decisive battle of Carrickshock, which was a victory for the peo- 
ple, settled the question at once and forever. The British ministry were 
alarmed, as they always are when Irishmen resort to force. They natur- 
ally feared the tithe war might develop into a national war, which it pos- 
sibly might have done but for the teachings and policy of these most 
useful agents of Britain, the Provincialists. It is not conveyed by this 
statement that these people meant in any way to be England's allies, unless 
a few time-serving leaders, but their monstrous slavish teaching was of 
more value to keep the people from asserting themselves than all the 
forces of the enemy, as is witnessed in Ireland to this day. 

Mr. Gladstone made a series of eloquent and powerful speeches, as 



24 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

this great Minister can, on any imaginable subject. He was determined 
to be restored to power and once more enjoy the honors and advantages 
of office, and the Irish Church was an admirable and useful party cry for 
the great Liberal. In all his speeches during the general election of 1868, 
he appealed to the most potent power in changing English opinion, 
namely, the fear of force. The dread of an Irish national war which 
might easily spread to England, causes more terror and panic to the 
British heart than a million Irish orators or all the passive resistance or 
voting power the Provincialists could bring to bear to solve their impossi- 
ble demand, a self-governed Ireland under the enemy's flag. 

In the course of a long speech in Wigan, October 4, 1868, Mr. Glad- 
stone said, alluding to Ireland and her past demand : " Sir Robert Peel 
and the Duke of Wellington, foregoing their deep and cherished con- 
victions, frankly told the country they accepted Catholic emancipation not 
as a good but a lesser of the two evils, and that if the people of this country 
were not prepared to accept it they must be prepared for the risk." 

" Duke of Wellington said : ' You must take the policy recom- 
mended, or else as honest and courageous men you must be prepared to 
face the consequences. .' " 

If those who are inclined to listen to the shallow teachings of the 
Provincialists would read these remarkable utterances of two of Britain's 
foremost statesmen in the past, quoted by the most prominent of her 
Ministers to-day, they would learn what kind of arguments influence 
British statesmen. To impress the British people with the necessity of 
disestablishing the Irish Church, Mr. Gladstone used the remarkable 
utterance that the explosion in Clerkenwell blew up that institution, and 
to further impress them with the seriousness and necessity for its dises- 
tablishment he quoted the speeches delivered by two Tory ministers dur- 
ing the struggle for Catholic emancipation. 

And yet Irishmen call Daniel O'Connell the liberator ! His power of 
oratory, the witching magic, the beauty of his voice that could entrance 
an Irish audience, had no influence whatever in the councils of the 
foreigner. He did not weigh a feather weight in the scale of their preju- 
dices. The Irish people might re-elect him for Clare until doomsday, 
before such an absurd means of influencing an enemy's councils would 
be seriously discussed by British ministers. The enemy was in possession 
of most important information, the Irish Nationalists were quietly prepar- 
ing to take the field against the British invader. In the face of this 
serious danger with which they were threatened, O'Connell was no more 
thought of, nor his speeches, which they considered as so much Billings- 
gate abuse ; he was no more to them than a fly would be alighting on 
the hand of a leader of a forlorn hope, who was about to mount a scaling 
ladder to enter the enemy's works charged with death, a something insig- 
nificant to be brushed aside. These British ministers remembered Oulart 
Hill, Enniscorthy, and Arklow, these sanguinary battles where British 
troops and British mercenaries were strewn by Irish valor in heaps of 
slain, upon these bloody fields, and they dreaded a renewal of those days. 
But what increased their alarm was the news they heard of the disaf- 
fection among the Irish Catholic soldiers. It was this terror which 
caused a panic in British councils and compelled England's bigoted king 
to sign the charter of Catholic emancipation. 

What a monstrous delusion, attributing this law to O'Connell's 
influence ! He had no more to do with the councils of the British nation, 
and he held there not even the same influence as the story teller in an 
Eastern court does in shaping the firmans of the Sultan. 

It is to the memory of the gallant men of '98 that Ireland should 
give the title " Liberator," if there was any liberation in the law. It i& 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 25 

not to the argument of the Provincialist, but to the fear of the pike of 
the National insurgent that Ireland remains indebted for this freedom of 
worship granted by his much extolled Bill. 

Mr. Gladstone continued his appeals to the fears of the British ; in 
another speech at this time he said : " In Ireland we have a population, 
a large portion of whom look either with aversion or sullen neutrality on 
the operation of the law. So long as that continues to be the case, 
and so long as tranquillity in Ireland is maintained only by the presence 
of overwhelming armed force, and the suspension of personal liberty — 
and when you have placed the guarantees of liberty in abeyance, you 
have arrived at a point only one step from civil war, or you have arrived 
at a state of things in which you find yourself engaged in a combat with 
a foreign foe, powerful enough to effect a landing on the shores of 
Ireland. . . We have thought it our duty to look in the face this dark 
fact of Irish discontent. Lord Lytton said, ' We talk of Irish bulls, 
but the words Irish Church are the greatest bulls in the language. It is 
called the Irish Church because it is a church not for the Irish.' " 

Mr. Gladstone, in his exertions to win over the English electorate 
to his views on the Irish question, told some very plain truths. He 
delivered the following very remarkable address on October 15, 1S68, 
at Liverpool : " They (the Tories) persist in refusing to take any true 
and adequate measure of the great evil by which Ireland is afflicted — I 
mean the estrangement of the minds of the people from that law, from 
public authority, from this country — aye and even to a great extent from 
the very throne under the shadow of which we are happy to live. Lord 
Mayo told us that a very large portion of the population of Ireland was 
either in positive sympathy with Fenianism, or else ready to seize the 
very first opportunity of armed resistance to the law. Mr. Maguire tells 
us he meets an Irish Southerner who has been crippled in the war fight- 
ing for the Southern cause, but that man holds up the other arm and 
says, ' This is the only arm I've left, and so help me God I'd give it and 
every drop of my heart's blood if I could strike one blow for Ireland.' Go 
to Canada and look for a few minutes at the state of the Irishmen in 
Canada. In what does Canada differ from the United Kingdom? 
Canada has a free Parliament and so have we, but Canada has not 
installed and enthroned in exclusive privilege the Church of the minority." 

How willful are English statesmen in refusing to comprehend plain 
truths when Ireland is being discussed ! Mr. Gladstone will not recognize 
the fact, which is apparent to any thinking man, that Ireland is not legally 
a part of the United Kingdom, and Britain holds no authority to frame 
her laws. 

Mr. Gladstone was successful in his appeal to the British people — the 
Irish Church was disestablished. The fears which he conjured up by 
introducing the specter of Fenianism helped him to thousands of waver- 
ing votes. But that which more especially broke down British prejudice 
was the knowledge that the passing of this Bill could not interfere with 
English interests, and that Britain could still enjoy her Irish trade monop- 
oly, and Irish industries continue paralyzed. 

The disestablishment of the Church had one effect in Ireland of which 
Mr. Gladstone never dreamt. Many of the better class Protestants who 
saw their country going to decay, used the irritation of their co-relig- 
ionists against Gladstone for the common good, for there can be no possi- 
ble reason that their motherland should not be as dear to them as to their 
Catholic brethren. 

This dissatisfaction even found an entrance to the Orange Lodges ; the 
Nationalists now began to awaken to the knowledge that a great fermen- 
tation was taking place in the minds of men hitherto opposed to even the 



26 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

discussion of Provincialism. The experience of the Nationalists and the 
history of the country taught them that with the addition of these 
sturdy Irishmen to the ranks of patriots great hope in the near success 
of the cause might be reasonably entertained. The Nationalists had 
struggled to remove that deadly blight — religious bigotry; it had been 
the most ardent work which patriots, since the days of Wolfe Tone, set 
before them, and now there came the hope so exquisitely expressed in 
the lines of the poet : 

Come — pledge again thy heart and hand, 

One grasp that ne'er shall sever ; 
Our watchword be — our native land ; 

Our motto — Love forever. 
And let the Orange lily be 

Thy badge, my patriot brother ; 
The everlasting green for me, 

And we for one another. 

Behold how gallant green the stem 

On which the flower is blowing ; 
And in one heavenly breeze and beam 

Both flower and stem are growing. 
The same good soil sustaining both, 

Make both united flourish ; 
It cannot give the orange growth 

And cease the green to nourish. 

United in our country's cause, 

Our party colors blended ; 
Till lasting peace from native laws 

On both shall have descended. 
Till then the orange lily be 

Thy badge, my patriot brother ; 
The everlasting green for vie, 

And we for one another. 

Isaac Butt, a great lawyer who had been engaged during the so-called 
trials of the I. R. B. Nationalists, and a Conservative of the old school, 
joined in the new movement then spreading among the Protestant 
citizens of Dublin. 

During the Fenian trials he was associated with the prisoners ; his 
contact with these men, many of them men of cultured minds, all of them 
men of intelligence, sincerely and truly patriotic, their self-sacrifice and 
devotion to their native land made an impression on his mind and changed 
the once opponent to national aspirations into a believer in Home Rule. 
When the amnesty association started he became its presiding officer. 

The state of the country, the continued decline in trade, and unceas- 
ing emigration attracted the attention of men hitherto considered British 
Conservatives. The State Church was removed, but Irish ills remained. 
The dissatisfied members of the disestablished Church held a private meet- 
ing in the Bilton Hotel, Dublin, on the evening of May 19, 1870, and there 
was created the germ of the Home Rule movement. A second meeting 
was held in the Imperial Hotel, where a committee was appointed to con- 
sider and report what the nature and objects of the new organization 
should be, and prepare a draft report for the next meeting. A third 
private meeting was called for June 2, 1870, to which the committee 
reported. They recommended that a native legislature should be the 
object of the new organization, the Irish Parliament to have the power 
under a Federal arrangement to manage all matters relating to the 
internal affairs of the country and the control of Irish resources and 
revenues, subject to the obligation of contributing a fair proportion to 
Imperial expenditure, the Imperial Parliament retaining the power of 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 27 

dealing with all questions affecting the Imperial Crown and Government 
and the defense and stability of the empire. The meeting went on to 
say that the public mind was turning strongly on a Home Parliament as 
the only means of arresting the decaying condition of the country and 
infusing some life into the Irish social system. 

On August 12, 1870, the Home Government Association came before 
the world with an address from the provisional committee. Thus was born 
into political life the second great Provincialist movement, with the title 
which has since become so familiar, termed Home Rule. It will be noticed 
that all these movements which have for object not the removal of Ire- 
land's curse, foreign supremacy, but merely its reform, always start out 
with the demand for certain powers of an extensive nature for the Irish 
Parliament, so nearly approaching the authority of a national congress 
in a free republic that the Irish masses are easily captivated ; they are 
told that the procuring of this Parliament is within the scope of a peace- 
ful agitation, whose only weapons shall be the playing off of British 
parties one against the other, and the influence of reason on the British 
people. They only ask the legislative control of the internal affairs of the 
nation, including Irish resources and revenues. An independent con- 
gress in a free nation could not possibly have greater legislative authority ; 
the Imperial affairs which these gentlemen would leave to what they are 
pleased to call the Imperial Parliament, an Irish Republic would have no 
interference with whatever. Does it seriously enter into the belief of any 
thinking man that Britain will ever peacefully surrender such power and 
control over Ireland's internal affairs as were solemnly put forth by this 
assemblage of respectable Protestant gentlemen, containing at that time 
some prominent Orangemen ? It is just that she should, they will say. If 
truth and justice had any influence on the issue, most certainly she would 
restore to Ireland her stolen independence. To agitate peacefully to get 
back a Parliament with these necessary powers is the same as to agi- 
tate for separation politically. One will be granted by the invader as 
soon as the other. Let there be plain speaking here ; there is'no possible 
chance for this great issue to be peacefully settled. It must be decided 
by force or else the certainty of national death. It is a remarkable fact 
that all these Provincial movements that have agitated unhappy Ireland 
always started out with these demands for full and perfect control over 
the resources of the country, and yet would accept some miserable 
measure, a fraud, and not worth the paper on which it was written. This 
gave some of the less scrupulous agitators a something to show the people 
and an opportunity to prove by the wildest assertions that this delusion 
was a piece of coming liberty. From the top of the ladder they went 
down rung by rung until they mingled with the enemy's legislators as 
one of themselves, becoming British partisans, with no remains of the 
grand and much-praised programme with which they won the Irish 
heart. 

Their great argument to the British people, and even to the Irish, is 
that it is Britain's interest to settle this Irish trouble, and in her own 
interests it would be right for her to grant Home Rule to Ireland. 
It might be said to the burglar who has broken into a house and is 
laden with booty, that it is his interest to surrender his plunder, for if 
ever his victim whom he has gagged gets loose, he will most certainly be 
punished. While the victim remains gagged the burglar will be of a differ- 
ent opinion. Britain has Ireland gagged and with the passive resistance, 
which is to quietly submit to the gagging, counseled by the Provincialists 
the victim is not likely to be loosened. To give to Ireland what she 
demands would be a material injury to British trade interests, apart from 
the National tendencies of the Irish people, which are hostile to Britain. 



28 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The Home Government Association, when a vacancy offered in the 
representation of Dublin City, put forward a Provincialist, but one who 
professed very advanced views on the condition of Ireland. The first 
candidate of the new organization was Captain Lawrence King-Harman, 
at present (1887) known as Colonel King-Harman, Tory Assistant Secre- 
tary for Ireland, a rabid coercionist. 

The King-Harman of that day was a man whom the people believed 
to be sincere and honest in his advocacy of Home Rule for Ireland. The 
Irish followers of Mr. Gladstone, agitators of the old school, when 
Irishmen who believed that the Parliament of Britain was the proper 
place to plead for their country's welfare, loved to be called by one of 
the British party names, and were known like their English comrades as 
Liberals. 

The Provincialists who now misrepresent Ireland have taken their 
position in British parties. The only difference existing is that the 
Gladstonians have adopted the name of Home Rulers, which is a dis- 
tinction in title without a difference in policy. For they are as much in 
favor of giving to Ireland Home Rule as specified in the platform of 
that party — that is, full or any control over Irish revenues and resources, 
as their rivals the Toiies. The only liberality dealt to Ireland besides 
mock legislation was a liberal and generous supply of coercion. 

King-Harman was supported by a strange admixture of parties. The 
dissatisfied Orangemen — but with most of these it was more pique than 
patriotism — gave him warm support. The Evening Mail of Dublin, the 
Orange organ, preached Home Rule doctrines. Dr. Maunsell, its pro- 
prietor, was a member of the Home Rule party and a stanch supporter 
of the Home Rule candidate. Along with the Irish Provincialists, a small 
section of the Nationalists helped King-Harman. Among his ablest sup- 
porters and one who worked for his election, was the late unfortunate 
James Carey. 

Sir Dominic Corrigan was the Liberal or Gladstone Candidate ; he 
considered the Irish very ungrateful to put up a rival candidate to one 
of Mr. Gladstone's supporters — a man who had promised so much to Ire- 
land and who had conferred the great boon of disestablishing the Irish 
Church. 

What wretched cant and falsehood are these fulsome praises of the 
Chief of the enemy's Liberal party ! They are to be heard multiplied 
to-day as full of adulation and untruth as they were then. Sir Dominic 
Corrigan was elected by a small majority, which was termed, in England, 
Ireland's indorsement of Mr. Gladstone's policy. 

The first public meeting of the new Home Rule Association was 
held in the Rotunda, Dublin, on the evening of September 1, 1870. 
Alderman Mackay was in the chair ; on the platform were Mr. Brown, 
M. P., Mayo ; Mr. Shaw, M. P., Bandon ; A. M. Sullivan, Dublin Nation ; 
Dr. Maunsell, Evening Mail; Rev. Mr. McQuade, Roman Catholic 
parish priest, County Clare. There were present Protestant and Catholic 
clergymen, Orange and Catholic editors, all animated with one thought — 
the necessity for self-government in Ireland to preserve a dying nation 
and to create material prosperity in a country drained of its wealth by 
the people of a neighboring island. But ignoring the lessons of history, 
they looked upon any but peaceful methods as both unchristian and 
illegal, to recover this stolen Home Rule, forgetting that by the use 
of the word legal they recognized their enemy's right to rule them. 
They also never thought of the great importance of their peaceful 
request to England ; that justice to Ireland, *". e., full and complete self- 
government, which demand they were about to formulate, meant a 
gigantic loss to British manufactures and commerce and English interests. 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 29 

In a word, Britain was to create a native government and Parliament 
to develop and build up a rival commercial power, which, although 
like Canada under her flag and part of her Empire, would still be 
an injury to her trade and manufactures as a competitor in European 
markets. British statesmen were to do this peacefully and legally by- 
appealing to their sense of justice. Heaven help us out of this delusion ; 
what a strange species of insanity infects what is termed the Conserva- 
tive Irish mind ! 

Mr. Lawrence Waldron, a former M. P. for Tipperary, moved a 
resolution at this meeting, declaring that every day's experience more 
forcibly impressed the conviction that the Imperial Parliament (i. e., 
British) is unequal to the task of adequately legislating in detail for 
the varied wants and local requirements of the three kingdoms, and 
that the interests of Ireland are especially misunderstood, disregarded, or 
sacrificed in that assembly. This resolution was seconded by Mr. W. 
Shaw, M. P. Rev. Professor Galbraith of Trinity College moved a 
resolution to the effect that it is absolutely essential to the well being of 
the country that the present legislative system be terminated and the 
management of Irish affairs committed to an Irish Parliament sitting 
in the national capital, where Irish business can best be transacted, 
and composed of Irish representatives, who can best understand the 
requirements of their country. Dr. Grattan, nephew of Henry Grattan, 
and other speakers followed in the same strain. The last resolution 
was one which thrilled the hearts of every Irish patriot present ; by this 
resolution the meeting solemnly pledged themselves to each other and to their 
country to enter earnestly in this National movement, burying for country 's 
sake all bygone feuds and bitter memories. 

These resolutions express clearly and plainly this Irish demand. The 
Irish Nationalists thoroughly indorse them, but they know, and the 
Provincialists if they seriously reflect must admit, that they are impossible 
of accomplishment by peaceful means ; the word self-government in Ireland 
goes to the very root of English and Irish interests, which are unques- 
tionably antagonistic. 

At whose expense would Irish industries be developed ? At the loss of 
all Irish trade to English merchants and manufacturers, and in the words 
of Professor Galbraith these are essential to the well being of Ireland. 
The last resolution, union of creeds and classes for the national welfare, 
had always been the cardinal doctrine of the Irish Nationalists. 

Mr. Gladstone, true to his hypocritical position, that of an English 
Minister posing as the friend of Ireland, introduced a severe coercion 
measure for that country — the usual outcome of British promises, and 
more especially those of Ireland's most deceitful friend, William Ewart 
Gladstone. The pages of history reveal no greater turpitude than this 
statesman's generous promises, so quickly followed by cruel and despotic 
deeds. This serpent wooing is leading numbers of our people to politi- 
cal destruction to-day. Even in his last so-called Home Rule Bill, the 
measure when printed gives the lie to his speech in the House one week 
before. He never came to power without passing a coercion measure for 
Ireland, even during his last short term of office. 

Mr. John Martin, a veteran Irish patriot, returned to Ireland from 
America. He joined the Home Rule ranks and was elected member for 
Meath. During the passage of Mr. Gladstone's Coercion Bill, the famous 
challenge to John Martin was given by Mr. Gladstone in the House. 
Mr. Gladstone, in the course of an able speech, giving his reasons why 
Ireland needed coercion, with just as eloquent and forcible language as 
he now denounces the Tories for following his example, said : " The 
honorable member for Meath [Mr. Martin] has come among us with certain 



30 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

stereotyped opinions which I will venture to call antiquated, for they are 
the inheritance of a former people — they are the growth of circumstances 
that have passed away ; but I cannot wonder and cannot complain if he 
be so far the servant of the evil traditions of his country and the evil tradi- 
tions of our country — for I fully admit that it is our, rather than his 
countrymen, who are responsible for the mischief that has come down 
to us; that he fails to exhibit on his first coming amongst us that flexi- 
bility of mind which would enable him to appreciate the full force 
of the efforts, and I may say the sacrifices, the British Parliament has 
made for the sake of carrying the spirit of peace into Ireland and giv- 
ing strength and unity to the Empire. I tell the honorable member 
for Meath we are not afraid to compete with him for the future confi- 
dence of Ireland. We see the nature of the challenge he makes to 
us ; he proclaims himself as one of those who are in foreign countries 
called the irreconcilables, and perhaps he does not decline the epithet. 
Well, sir, he will pass away and I shall pass away, but there are many 
who now sit here whom I firmly believe will outlive the opinions of which 
the honorable gentleman is now in this House the solitary organ. It is 
impossible that acts of justice and good will should not bear fruit. We 
acted on all the dearest principles of life and action when we proffered 
our confidence in the people of Ireland and when we ventured in those 
early days to say that we constantly received the most gratifying testi- 
mony to the effect that is being produced — tranquilly and gradually pro- 
duced — in the minds and hearts of the people by the acts of the British 
Parliament. . . ." 

The people of Ireland read this speech of the English Premier with 
surprise that so learned a man and so prominent an Englishman as 
Mr. Gladstone should allow himself to be carried away by the fancy that 
there was the smallest, even the very smallest material concession to 
Ireland in the disestablishment of the Irish Church. That measure had no 
more effect upon the comfort and happiness of the Irish people than if 
Mr. Gladstone had passed a law to regulate the Buddhist religion, or had 
deposed the Grand Llama of Thibet. His Land Bill was of similar 
importance. The Irish farmers suffered the same as if this wonderful 
measure had never been heard of. 

In the opening of his speech Mr. Gladstone speaks of frightful 
organizations and of secret societies spreading over the land. He repeats 
the stereotyped phraseology used by British Ministers when applying to 
their Parliament for those easily acquired coercive powers. How mag- 
nificent are Mr. Gladstone's sentiments, when he tells the Irish he is 
acting on "the dearest principles of his life," and he continues to tell 
them that he has the utmost confidence in the people of Ireland! Is 
coercion a proof of this confidence ? it is a repetition of Mr. Gladstone's 
old hypocritical cant. Ireland's choice lies between the poison of the 
Liberal Serpent and the fangs of the Tory Wolf. 

In his challenge to John Martin, Mr. Gladstone plainly proves the 
utter impossibility of English Ministers ever understanding, or trying to 
do so, the real issue between the two nations ; many are inclined to 
think they do not want to comprehend it. Mr. Gladstone repeats the 
antiquated statement that " previous generations of Englishmen mis- 
governed Ireland, but all this is a thing of the past, these evils have been 
removed." Irishmen who refuse to believe Mr. Gladstone are fossils 
representing the evil traditions of the past. 

Mr. Gladstone falls into the error of all his countrymen when speak- 
ing of Irish disaffection — i. e., Irish nationality ; they think the main- 
spring of this power exists in foreign countries. The most serious events 
in Irish history have been the work of men who never left their native 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 31 

land. Change of residence makes no change in the Irishman ; the 
patriotic members of the community are the same everywhere, possibly 
a little more " irreconcilable " in Ireland and Britain than in America. 
This may appear, to those who have not given this question the necessary 
study, a strange statement. It should be recollected that it is marvelous 
that the American Irish are so patriotic and faithful to their motherland, 
considering that their interests are so necessarily bound up in their 
adopted country. Their generosity in contributing money for Irish 
national purposes is unequaled in history. There is one class of foreign 
Irish that seems, owing to their silence, to be completely overlooked. These 
are the German, Austrian, Russian, French, and Spanish Irish, who may 
become more potent factors in the solution of this question than Britain or 
possibly Ireland dreams of. It is not meant those of Irish birth, those 
are of course patriotic ; but men whose ancestors have lived in Europe 
for generations. Their numbers are small but their power is immense. 

The Irish veteran whom he challenged replied to Mr. Gladstone. Mr. 
Martin said, that as one opposed to this measure both in principle and 
detail, in whole and in all its parts, he must renew his protest against 
it at every stage of its fatal progress. He did not expect that the Right 
Honorable gentleman would, on the second reading of the Bill, have come 
forward to vindicate this exceptional policy which had been applied only 
to Ireland, and never to England or Scotland ; but he had thought 
proper to leave this vindication of the policy for which he was morally 
responsible to the talented and learned gentleman, the Solicitor General 
for Ireland. That learned gentleman (the present Judge Dowse) 
had in his opinion a very comic way of doing rather tragic business. 
His statements and arguments might be satisfactory to the govern- 
ment with which he was connected, but he felt bound to say, however 
well those statements and arguments, or things which passed for 
arguments, might be received in that House, they would in Ireland 
be received merely as the statements of an advocate speaking from 
his brief. He believed the Right Honorable gentleman was desirous of 
conciliating the Irish people by redressing their wrongs, every one of 
which had resulted from the rule of which he was the head, so far as 
what he and Parliament regarded as English ititerests would permit. . . 
The Irish people had never asked this Parliament to take charge of their 
affairs, they had never consented, and he believed they would never con- 
sent, that this Parliament should have charge of their affairs. However 
the Irish people might submit to the laws of this country, they would never 
acknowledge the right of any other authority to make laws binding 
on the Irish people but the free Parliament of Ireland. The Right 
Honorable gentleman had challenged him as to the reception that would 
be given by the people of Ireland to his antiquated policy, as he was 
pleased to call it. He was willing to accept the challenge of the Right 
Honorable gentleman upon fair conditions. He would accept the Right 
Honorable gentleman's challenge on these conditions ! Let him suspend 
for one year the system of illegality by which Ireland was governed — 
the jury-packing system which had been the rule in all political trials, so 
long as he had been able to observe public affairs in that country ; let 
the rights of the constitution as they existed in England and Scotland be 
restored to Ireland ; let the people of Ireland be entitled to have arms, 
to learn the use of them ; to form themselves into volunteer companies ; 
let them have a free press ; let that system be tried for one year, and it 
would be seen whether the policy of this measure was a wise and 
patriotic policy to pursue, and whether on the other hand, the confi- 
dence he felt in the ineradicable love of freedom of his countrymen 
would not turn out to be correct. 



32 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The suspension of the habeas corpus in Westmeath and in portions 
of Meath had been advocated on the ground that offenses against the 
law were committed in that part of Ireland, and it was not practicable for 
the law authorities to obtain evidence by which to detect and punish the 
offenders. Then it was immediately concluded from that premise, that 
the Habeas Corpus Act should be suspended, and that the Lord Lieuten- 
ant should be enabled to seize and imprison for two years any or all of the 
inhabitants of these districts. 

It had, however, never occurred to any of the advocates of this 
measure, to show in what way the imprisonment of some or all of the 
inhabitants of these districts would enable the Government in Ireland 
either to detect or to punish the criminal. Although the people of this 
country had long ago got rid of the antiquated notion of the divine 
right of kings, they appear to have supplanted it by the worse notion 
of the divine right of ministers. It has been argued by the honorable 
and learned Solicitor General for Ireland, and also by the noble lord who 
introduced the measure in another place, that the Lord Lieutenant would 
know whom to imprison and whom to leave untouched, and the former 
had already congratulated the House upon the fact that even an attempt 
to pass the measure had induced suspected parties to fly from the 
country. 

If the Lord Lieutenant, assisted by the honorable and learned 
gentleman, the Solicitor General for Ireland, and the stipendiary magis- 
trates of Westmeath, Meath, and Kings counties, was as infallible as the 
Pope himself, and was all-seeing and all-knowing upon this subject, why 
did not the government pass a bill through Parliament empowering the 
Lord Lieutenant to hang and transport every inhabitant of Ireland 
whom he might suspect? There would be quite as much respect for 
constitutional law in such a measure as there was in that now before the 
House. 

He could scarcely express the indignation he felt at having to 
express sentiments, which were those of nine out of every ten of the 
Irish people, before a careless and impatient House ; he complained not 
of the manner in which he had been listened to, but of the gulf of mind 
that existed between the House and himself on this subject. 

Honorable members in that House frequently spoke of Irish crime and 
outrage with the utmost horror — Pharisaical cant ! but what would the 
simple, noble, pious, Catholic peasantry of Meath think of the criminal 
condition of this country when they learnt that a committee was sitting 
upstairs to inquire into the best mode of giving protection to infant life 
in England. He did not expect that that inquiry would result in a Bill 
being brought into that House with the title of " Protection of Infant 
Life (England) Bill." 

Mr. John Martin's speech attracted universal attention ; even the great 
"Thunderer" of Printing House Yard, then Gladstonian in its views, 
replied to the Irishman's speech, and of course tried to belittle his argu. 
ment. In its issue of May 29, 187 1 ; it said : 

" The Nationalist member for Meath has already made a certain mark 
in the House of Commons. His earnest and striking speeches have 
found a hearing which the crude and impracticable opinions they ex- 
press could scarcely be expected to secure, and his outspoken scorn 
for the Ministerial policy of conciliation toward Ireland, wrung from 
Mr. Gladstone on Friday night a defiance which had the ring of the 
confident and convincing rhetoric which carried the Church and Land 
Bills. 

" It is too late for Mr. Martin, or the party which he represents, to 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 33 

deny at this time of day that the Irish people cared nothing for the dis- 
establishment of the Church or for security of tenure. 

" In the face of all his friends' pleadings Mr. Martin tells us now that 
the Irish people never sought to have their wrongs redressed by the 
Imperial Parliament, and would wish us to infer that our work of the 
past two sessions has been rather officious than meritorious ; an impetus 
toward the sister island, rather than a message of peace. 

"The policy of 'the irreconcilables ' has at all events the disadvan- 
tage of being impracticable at present. 

" Meantime the policy of conciliation, which Mr. Gladstone's Govern- 
ment, the Liberal party, and the Reform Parliament have so earnestly 
pursued is at work. Is it to be abandoned because ' the irreconcilables ' 
tell us that Ireland can never be conciliated ? 

" The implacable hostility which the member for Meath proclaims, the 
animosity that no concession can appease, the whole tradition and policy 
of the irreconcilable party, are political fossils, the production of a past age 
and of conditions entirely different from those now existing in Ireland. 

" A man who was a baffled revolutionist more than twenty years ago, 
and who has since brooded in seclusion over his defeat, must find himself 
out of sympathy with the men of the new generation. 

" Dissaffection exists and for a time must continue to exist as a senti- 
ment and a tradition, but when the substantial evils upon which it fed 
drop out of memory, as they have dropped out of reality, it will perish of 
inanition. 

" These men talk as though Mr. Gladstone were a Castlereagh and the 
Parliament that passed the Church and Land acts a tyrannous assembly 
of persecuting fanatics. A heavy responsibility rests on all such politi- 
cians." 

It is now more than sixteen years since this article appeared in the 
London Times. Will these British writers and statesmen never learn that 
the doctrine of nationality is immutable ; that it will live in every genera- 
tion and knows no age ? Time can never dull its brightness ; next to our 
love of the Creator it occupies the warmest shrine in the human heart ; 
vain folly of those who try to govern by a so-called right of conquest. 
John Martin has passed away, and another generation has arisen, more 
determined, if possible, to wrest the crown of nationhood from England's 
ruthless hands, determined to put in practice whatever measures are neces- 
sary for the fulfillment of this noble mission. 

When the Times and Englishmen speak of the removal of substantial 
evils by their Parliament they speak of an utter and complete impossibil- 
ity. That House has never conceded one, no not one substantial benefit to 
the Irish people. 

John Martin replied to the English organ in an interesting letter which 
appeared in that paper on June 2, 187 1. These are the concluding 
sentences : 

"I must say that Mr. Gladstone's boast of his confidence in the Irish 
people, at the very moment when he holds them disarmed under guard of 
great armies of soldiers and police, gagged by a press ukase, under the 
terror of two Coercion Bills of his own infliction, is incomprehensible to 



34 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

my mind on any hypothesis which attributed to that Right Honorable 
gentleman either justness of moral conception or appropriateness of lan- 
guage. 

" It is a strange political spectacle, that of Mr. Gladstone declaring that 
'he is not afraid to compete' with me for the future confidence of Ire- 
land. He a Minister with absolute power over my country, disposing of 
every place of power, honor, and emolument in Ireland out of which he 
rewards his adherents, and with his two Coercion Bills to strike terror to 
those who may entertain my sentiments, and I with neither money nor 
honors to buy support, banned, because of my political sentiments, from 
office, honor, or emolument of the state — a pariah in my own country so 
far as English rule can make me a pariah. 

" I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, 

" John Martin. 

" Warrenpoint, County Down, Ireland, May 3, 187 1." 

The opposition of Mr. Martin and other Irish members to the Coercion 
Bill was as useless so far as practical results were concerned as similar 
recent attempts. On June 9 it passed its third reading and became law. 

The passing of the Coercion Act by Mr. Gladstone made him very 
unpopular in Ireland. A vacancy occurring in Westmeath the Provincial- 
ists chose P. J. Smyth as their representative as an answer to the English 
Minister's challenge to honest John Martin. In the course of the election 
there were several speeches delivered denouncing England's hypocritical 
Premier. Mr. P. J. Smyth in the hustings, after he had been declared 
elected, stated : " Mr. Gladstone challenged Westmeath to give an answer, 
["A voice, He is answered now."] Here it is : . . . I charge Mr. Glad- 
stone that the object of his Coercion Act is not the repression of crime 
and outrage, but that the true object is to facilitate the work of depopula- 
tion in the country. . . I said in my address that I will oppose the 
government of Mr. Gladstone. I will do so in no factious spirit. . . 
Mr. Gladstone admitted while the Church and Land acts were prepared 
and passed into law that they were 7vrung from him by men who were 
at the same time being tortured in prison and who were only subsequently 
liberated to be exiled." 

Among the speakers on the platform that day in Westmeath was 
the renegade King-Harman, who came forward to indorse the Irish de- 
mand. He said, " Thank God they had returned a member in accordance 
with the views of the men of Ireland. . . For two years the press of 
England had rung with denunciations of Westmeath and had called its 
people murderers and assassins. If they were, how was it that he 
[Captain King-Harman] could come among them ? He dared to take 
his life in his hand and walk in Westmeath, but he would not dare to 
take his life in his hand and walk in the dark lanes of Sheffield. They 
had vindicated themselves and sent a man t Parliament to hurl back the 
challenge that Gladstone gave to Mr. Martin, to tell him that his mock 
legislation was a humbug, and that they would not stand a base, brutal, 
or bloody Whig in the country." 

What power have English gold and English honors on some Irish- 
men ! Think of King-Harman's subsequent degraded position in the esti- 
mation of every right thinking man — in the service of his country's 
enemy, ready to repeat the cruel stabs he has already given to his un- 
happy motherland. 

Another renegade and traitor met his death at this time, the notorious 
informer, Pierce Nagle. 

This wretch joined the Fenian movement in Ireland with the deliberate 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 35 

intention of betraying it to the British. At the time he was passing as a 
Fenian in the National ranks, he was giving what information he could 
procure, and any letters he could steal in the Irish People office, to Chief 
Superintendent Ryan of the G division of Dublin detectives, for a miser- 
able weekly pittance. 

On the day the British Government determined to seize the Fenian 
organ and arrest all of the leading Nationalists who were known to them, 
Nagle met Ryan in the Phoenix Park by appointment, when Nagle 
received his "blood 'money," and then and there arranged to deliver 
James Stephens, known as the C. O. I. R. (Central Organizer Irish 
Republic) into the enemy's power. 

On that evening, September 15, 1865, Stephens held a meeting at* 
rooms in Denzille Street for the purpose of conferring with his lieutenants. 
Mr. William Roantree, head-centre for the military members of the 
I. R. B. — a gentleman who has since sealed his devotion to Ireland by 
much suffering — was one of those present ; also Captain O'Boyle of 
the 69th New York Volunteers Irish Brigade, and Pierce Nagle. There 
had been some trouble ajnong the Tipperary centres. Such was the con- 
fidence Stephens held in Nagle that he was sending him to Clonmel to 
confer with the men, he being a native of that place. Nagle had 
received £\o ($50) for expenses, when Mr. James O'Connor, bookkeeper 
in the Irish People office, burst into the room, exclaiming to his astonished 
hearers the news that the office had been broken into by the police and 
all the contents seized, and that the enemy was making arrests rapidly. 
Stephens seemed completely astounded at the news ; the C. O. I. R. was 
not the master mind in an emergency which his countrymen thought. 
•" Why," said he, " in any country there would be a warning given before 
the seizure of a newspaper. Go back," he cried, addressing Mr. 
O'Connor, " and bring me all further particulars. I will stay here until 
ten o'clock." When Mr. O'Connor left the house Nagle began to fidget, 
and said to Stephens he had better leave and see how things were. He 
was anxious to have Stephens arrested, as he had arranged that day with 
Detective Ryan. Nagle was disliked by many of the men in Dublin ; 
they avoided him instinctively. Several of the leading men wondered at 
Stephens placing so much reliance on this man and intrusting him with 
any duties. His cat-like servility and fawning flattery won the vain side 
of the C. O. I. R.'s character. Although he was thought incapable and 
utterly unsuited for the duties occasionally given him by Stephens, none 
of the members dreamed for a moment he was a traitor. When he left 
Stephens' presence an uneasy feeling took possession of Mr. Roantree, 
and he hurried after Nagle. He overtook him as he was hurrying with 
the news of Stephens' whereabouts to have the C. O. I. R. captured. 
Roantree did not, of course, suspect this ; but by his action coming up 
and staying with Nagle he foiled the traitor in his object. Mr. Roantree 
suggested that they should take a cab and drive past the office in 
Parliament Street, but Nagle refused, hoping to shake off Roantree. 
They continued their walk up College Green into Dame Street. There 
was great excitement among the people. The news of the seizure of the 
National organ was spread broadcast, and the arrests were magnified ; all 
sorts of exaggerated stories were in circulation. The tread of soldiery was 
heard coming toward them. Roantree and Nagle stood aside to let the 
crowd pass. It was a military guard escorting some of that night's 
political arrests en route to prison ; at its head marched several detect- 
ives. Smollen, one of the notorious Dublin detectives of that period, 
espied the two men on the footway ; he shouted out to his detectives, 
" There stands Roantree and Nagle, arrest them." In a moment they 
were prisoners with the rest. None of the detectives was aware that 



36 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Nagle was in the employ of Ryan, supplying their chief with information. 
Ryan kept this knowledge to himself, the better to guard Nagle and so 
protect his usefulness. 

When the arrested Irish Nationalists were brought into the Lower Castle 
yard, Nagle saw his friend, Chief Detective Ryan, who passed him by un- 
noticed. Nagle began to get uneasy and commenced a whine of explana- 
tion. Ryan replied to him with the Dogberry-like wisdom of a British de- 
tective, by making the original remark : " Show me your company and I'll 
tell you who you are." They were all locked up together. One of the 
prisoners had on his person some important letters — how reckless and 
with what lack of caution some of these men acted by carrying unneces- 
sary correspondence ! Nagle tried to get possession of these letters, but 
Mr. Roantree anticipated him by seizing and destroying them. 

They asked each other who was the traitor, for all felt certain that the 
enemy had some spy in their ranks, or he would not take action so hur- 
riedly. Nagle's blood must have curdled with fright at some of the 
remarks made by his associates. 

General Michael Kerwin of the 13th Pennsylvania cavalry, who com- 
manded a cavalry brigade under Generals Grant and Sherman, was one 
of the numerous Irish-American soldiers then in Dublin, having left 
America for Ireland when mustered out after the war. These gallant 
soldiers believed that Ireland was about to take the field and came over 
to do battle for their beloved motherland and give to her all the skill and 
knowledge they had acquired on American battlefields. Some officers 
in the regular army of the United States resigned their commissions to 
enable them to give their military knowledge to their country in the 
coming war for national independence. 

General Kerwin contributed to an Irish historical work a chapter on 
Fenianism, and in it he describes Nagle's treachery and the incidents of 
that memorable night : " Accordingly a privy council was held in Dub- 
lin Castle on the 15th day of September, 1865, and on the same night 
the city was startled with the intelligence that the Irish People news- 
paper was seized, and that everybody connected, with it was in the 
hands of the police. The excitement in the ranks of the confederates 
was intense. No one seemed to know the full extent of the damage 
done to the cause. ' Is Stephens arrested ? ' was the question on every 
tongue, and it was not until the following morning that it became gen- 
erally known that he was still at large. This knowledge tended some- 
what to allay the excitement and general feeling of despondency, which 
for the moment seemed to take possession of every mind. ' As long as 
the " Boss" is free,' was the cry, 'the fight is bound to take place this 
year.' 

" The extent of the seizure was soon known, and it was found that some 
of the choicest spirits of the movement were in the hands of the police. 
O'Donovan Rossa, Thomas Clarke Luby, John O'Leary, William Roan- 
tree, and many others, were among the first victims of the treacherous 
work of the perjured informer. 'Who is the traitor?' was heard whis- 
pered on every side, and a vow of vengence was uttered that boded no 
good to the wretch if once unmasked. 

" On the night of the arrest, Mr. Stephens was holding a reception at 
the rooms of one of his organizers — Mr. Flood — giving instructions to a 
number of the ' B's ' or centres, who were calling on him in turn, when 
the news of the capture was brought to him by Mr. O'Connor, one of his 
messengers. Mr. Stephens, on receiving the information, rushed excitedly 
into the waiting room with the news, which startled everyone present. 
Among them was Pierce Nagle, Stephens' trusted and confidential man, 
the one of all others who knew most of his surroundings, and of the men 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 37 

with whom he did business. This devotee, who fawned on his master 
with cat-like affection, positively shed tears when the news was commu- 
nicated, and no man present was more bitter in his denunciation of the 
English tyrants than was Pierce Nagle. A few days later when the pris- 
oners were placed before the bar, and all eyes were looking for the man 
who was to swear away their lives and liberty, Pierce Nagle took the 
witness-stand. A murmur of horror went through the throng in the 
courtroom, every eye flashed, and every hand twitched ; there were a 
hundred men within twenty feet of the wretch that day who could and 
who would have stilled his treacherous heart forever, had they been free 
from the restraint of a superior authority." 

The dropping of important documents, which the invaders found on 
Kingstown Railroad balcony, set the enemy in motion. The information 
of a positive and confidential nature contained in these papers, that large 
sums of money were coming from America, alarmed John Bull, who feared 
that his ill-gotten conquest might shake off her robber plunderer by the 
naked steel, the only argument the assassin of the Irish people will listen to. 
Pierce Nagle's information did not amount to much in Dublin Castle esti- 
mation. The invader did not think his rule could be seriously threatened 
by such creatures as this informer. It was the American documents which 
compelled his action. When it is recollected that the Irish Nationalists 
enrolled in Ireland to fight the foreigner at this period numbered over one 
hundred thousand men, the fact that but one informer was to be found in 
this immense force prove what is an undoubted fact, that no race to-day 
on God's earth are more loyal to their country and each other, during the 
struggle or possible struggle for liberty. It is vanity in some men for 
leadership, or trying to make it appear that they and they alone were the 
actors in certain events, and that accursed human frailty, jealousy, which 
has flooded America with so many assailers of characters among men who 
were good and faithful at home. 

There has been no more potent weapon used by Ireland's persecutor 
and would-be conqueror, than this cry of informer. When the National 
organ was seized in Parliament Street, the enemy procured enough of 
written matter to manufacture whatever evidence — so-called — they needed. 
Had they not Nagle they would have procured some perjurer for pay to 
do the work necessary to carry on the semblance of law and the mockery 
of trials. They tried to poison the mind of the general mass of the Irish 
people against the movement, by publishing a letter of a literary gentle- 
man not inserted in the Irish papers as the programme of the Fenians, as 
the Nationalists were then styled. And the further to prove their case 
before mankind, whose ear they unfortunately hold to pour their own 
versions of these events, they arrested this gentleman and sent him to 
penal servitude, although he had no connection whatever with the revolu- 
tionary movement, and was as free from complicity in the patriotic 
endeavor to free Ireland as the enemy's minions. 

When the news of the seizure reached the men throughout the country, 
their spirits rose with delight, they were indeed eager for the fray ; the 
enemy had struck his first blow, surely the hour had come to take the 
field ; so numerous and well organized a body of Irishmen would not 
allow the foe to occupy any further vantage ground. Several men in the 
larger cities resigned good business positions the better to make prepara- 
tions for the approaching fight. 

When the I. R. B. became cognizant of Pierce Nagle's treachery, 
manifested so publicly as appearing on the witness stand in the enemy's 
court, he was immediately put on trial ; he was found guilty of treason by 
the Irish court martial and sentenced to death. Unfortunately here 
stepped in the timidity of the C. O. I. R., who was a man of weak nerves, 



38 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and opposed to bloodshed, which incapacitated him for revolutionary- 
leadership, although an excellent organizer. He refused to indorse the 
findings of the court, and gave most peremptory orders to stay all 
action. He thus saved this wretch's life at that time. His was the 
"superior authority" spoken of by General Kerwin. 

It may be asked, would the sentence of this court be carried out. Yes, 
unquestionably ; the opportunity and the men both were at hand. In the 
Briton's stronghold, surrounded by the bolts, bars, and guards of the 
enemy, his treacherous heart would have been stilled forever — a fitting 
punishment for so infamous a treason. 

Pierce Nagle's treason haunted him for years. He suffered for some 
time the agony which all informers must undergo. In every approaching 
shadow he saw an enemy and an avenger. The British gave him employ- 
ment as a turnkey to preserve his wretched life. But as time wore on he 
became more confident, and anxious once again to mix in the busy world 
he left his prison home, and went to reside in the huge metropolis of 
London, thinking his identity would be forever lost in the great human 
vortex of the capital. But the sleuthhound of revolutionary vigilance 
was ever on his trail ; in 1873 ne na ^ a business place in London. He 
was then passing by the name of Kennedy. His movements were watched ; 
he was traced to his residence in South London, and the executioner of 
Ireland's law prepared to put the death sentence into effect. One night 
he was followed en roiite to his home ; he was usually accompanied by a 
woman, but this evening his pursuer found him alone. "Whenever enter- 
ing any quiet street, as was his custom, he looked anxiously around. He 
took his loaded revolver from his pocket, toyed with it a moment, and was 
about to replace it in his pocket when he was fired upon ; the first shot 
gave him but a slight flesh wound ; he was so paralyzed with fear that he 
never attempted to reply to the fire of his assailant, but dropped his 
loaded revolver on the ground, where it was shortly afterward picked up, 
and fled. A second shot brought him to the earth with the fearful 
scream of a damned soul. The horror and hell of his thoughts must have 
been greater agony than his physical pain ; a third shot and the avenger 
left him apparently dead. 

But the wretch still lived, and if he had not carried that poison in his 
soul which festered and corrupted his physical health, he might possibly 
have recovered. He was discovered by some residents of the neighbor- 
hood who were aroused at the sound of pistol shots and had the wounded 
Nagle conveyed to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he lingered in 
agony of body and mind for some time. The shooting of Nagle was kept 
secret among a small circle of Irish patriots, for the enemy was using 
every possible means to come at his assailant quickly. Yet some men 
who knew the wretched Nagle heard the news and could scarcely believe 
the tale until they visited the hospital and saw the dying informer ; it is 
very hard to keep such information absolutely secret. Nagle died about 
the middle of July, 1873. 

The British Government, fearful of the loss of prestige they would 
incur in Irish Nationalist circles and among the patriotic Irish masses, 
kept back his identity as much as possible. The mistaken policy 
adopted by the Irish revolutionists was to do the same ; they forget always 
that secrecy in action is a distinct policy from the moral effect of a public 
announcement which would have been to their advantage, had the news of 
the death of this mercenary wretch, who sold himself for blood money, 
been spread broadcast over the world. An Irish pressman on one of the 
London dailies inserted a paragraph, but all further comment was sup- 
pressed. The man who fired the shot was after some time sent out of 
London ; he still lives under the shelter of a friendly flag. 



HOME RULE ASSOCIATIONS. 39 

In November, 1873, the great Home Rule Conference was held in the 
Rotunda, Dublin. On the 18th, 19th, and 20th of that month this con- 
ference was called together by the Home Rule leaders to provoke dis- 
cussion of the National demand and to lay a solid foundation on which to 
build up the Irish federalist movement. 

Among those who attended were the following members of Parliament : 
Messrs. Bryan, Butt, Blennerhassit, Brady, Brown, Callan, D'Arcy, Dease, 
Delahunty, McCarthy, Downing, Hon. C. Munster, A. Redmond, Ronayne, 
Shaw, Smith, Stackpoole, Syman, N. D. Murphy, Sir John Gray, John 
Martin, etc. The Mr. Redmond, M. P., who attended this conference, and 
who was a finished speaker, and had made an eloquent address there, 
was the father of Mr. Parnell's two followers of to-day, Messrs. John and 
William Redmond, so well known to Irishmen all over the world. 

Mr. Shaw, M. P., Bandon, was elected to the chair. Captain King- 
Harman read the requisition, which was signed by twenty-four thousand 
persons. The following resolutions were passed by this great Provincial 
conference : 

" 1st. That as the basis of proceedings of these conferences, we declare 
our conviction that it is essentially necessary to the peace and prosperity 
of Ireland, that the right of legislation on all Irish affairs should be 
restored to our country. 

" 2d. That solemnly we assert the inalienable right of the Irish people 
to self-government. We declare that the time in our opinion has come 
when a combined and energetic effort should be made to obtain the 
restoration of that right. 

"3d. That in accordance with the ancient and constitutional rights of 
the Irish nation, we claim the privilege of managing our own affairs by a 
Parliament assembled in Ireland and composed of Sovereign, Lords, and 
Commons of Ireland. 

"4th. That in claiming these rights and privileges for our country, we 
adopt the principle of a Federal arrangement which would secure to the 
Irish Parliament the right of legislating for and regulating all matters 
relating to the internal affairs of Ireland while leaving to the Imperial 
Parliament the power of dealing with all questions affecting the Imperial 
Crown and government, legislation regarding the colonies and other 
dependencies of the Crown, the relations of the Empire with foreign 
states, and all matters operating on the defense and stability of the 
Empire at large, as well as the power of granting and providing the 
supplies necessary for Imperial purposes. That such an arrangement 
does not involve any change in the existing Constitution of the Imperial 
Parliament or any interference with the prerogatives of the Crown or dis- 
turbance of the principles of the Constitution. That to secure to the Irish 
people the advantages of Constitutional Government it is essential //W there 
should be in Ireland an Administration for Irish affairs controlled according 
to the constitutional principles by the Irish Parliament and conducted by 
Ministers constitutionally responsible to the Irish Parliament. That in the 
opinion of this Conference a Federal arrangement based upon these 
principles would consolidate the strength and maintain the integrity of the 
Imperial Crown. That while we believe that in an Irish Parliament the 
rights and liberties of all classes of our countrymen would find their best 
and surest protection, we are willing there should be incorporated in the 
Federal constitution articles supplying the amplest guarantees that no 
change should be made by that Parliament in the present settlement of 
property in Ireland, and that no legislation should be adopted to establish 
any religious ascendency ia Ireland or to subject any person to disabilities 
on account of his religious opinions." 



4© THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

On November 20, 1873, the conference concluded its labors, but 
although some of the best of the Irish people tried to serve their country 
by formulating an excellent and practical platform with the Provincialist 
theory of asking the enemy to give Ireland self-legislation, their actions 
were willfully misstated and purposely falsified by the British people, 
whose vital interests would be affected if they quietly yielded to Ireland's 
peaceful demands. A number of men who were trained and brought up 
in the British school of Liberal politics espoused the meaningless cry 
Home Rule for the purpose of securing their seats at the approaching 
general election. The English members who use that cry to-day are 
just as sincere as were those men fifteen years ago. The Flag of Ireland 
of November 22, 1873, commenting on these people said : " Many 
gentlemen will now come forward on the popular platform ; they will 
discover by a sudden inspiration that the only hope for Ireland is Home 
Rule." 

The Parliament of 1868, elected on Mr. Gladstone's hypocritical cry 
<( Justice to Ireland," was drawing to a close. The English by-elections 
had all recently gone against Mr. Gladstone, the English people were 
growing weary of his rule and wished a change. That portion of the 
Irish people who hailed his advent to power were dissatisfied and disap- 
pointed. The Land and Church bills, ushered in with such eclat, were 
proven utterly worthless, as all these so-called English concessions have 
and must be. The Provincialists, who had raised the hopes of a portion 
of the Irish people, telling them of the great things for Ireland the 
return to power of the " Grand Old Man " would bring, were compelled 
to repudiate their former speeches, or else seek refuge in silence. They 
had deceived the people then as they are deceiving them to-day ; cloud- 
ing their intelligence with misleading statements, and slandering and 
misquoting any Irishman who would attempt to point out to his country- 
men the real position of affairs. But the stern logic of facts was 
against them at the close of 1873. Ireland had experienced the fruits of 
Gladstone's coercive rule, and the nation could not be hoodwinked. The 
near approach of the general election compelled Gladstone's Irish 
followers to drop away from him, and appear at least to embrace Home 
Rule. This was the condition of Irish party politics when Charles 
Stewart Parnell appeared upon the scene, soon to become an important 
leader in England's easily solved problem, Irish Provincialist Agitation. 



CHAPTER III. 

(1873 to 1874.) 
BRITISH PARTIES — DEATH OF JOH^T MITCHELL AND JOHN MARTIN. 

English Opinion Near the Close of the Gladstone Administration 1868-74 — Lord 
Chamberlain Suppresses Political Burlesque — Mr. Disraeli on the Gladstone Ministry 
— A Government of Plundering and Blundering — General Election, 1874 — Capture 
of Coomassie — Indian Famine — Disraeli's Sneering Allusion to Ireland — Irish Elec- 
tions — Return of sixty-one Home Rulers — Defeat of Chichester Fortescue in Louth — 
Ireland Accused of Ingratitude to Mr. Gladstone — Comments of the London Times 
— Crushing Defeat of the Liberals — A Large Tory Majority — Mr. Gladstone 
Resigns Office — Mr. Disraeli Forms an Administration — Mr. Gladstone's New 
Peers — Refuses to See an Amnesty Deputation — The Irish Electors of Greenwich 
and Mr. Gladstone — Denounced by his Former Friends — Meeting of Home Rulers 
in Dublin — Mr. Butt's Great Speech — Formation of Home Rule Parliamentary 
Party — Signing the Roll of Honor — Meeting of the New Parliament — The Queen's 
Speech — Mr. Butt's Amendment — Mr. Gladstone on Mr. Butt's Home Rule — 
Amendment Defeated — Effect of Gladstone's Coercion — Case of Patrick Casey — 
Great Home Rule Debate — Irish Attorney General's Crushing Reply for the Govern- 
ment — Dr. Ball's Emphatic Refusal — Defeated by an Immense Majority — John 
Mitchell's Return to Ireland — Ireland still at the Agitation Delusion — The Men of '48 
— Beneath the Shadow of Mourne Mountains — Home Once More — John Mitchell — 
Scene in the Churchyard — John Martin's Death — Ireland's Grief — Tribute in the 
Dublin Irishman — Mr. Parnell Nominated for Meath — Mr. Parnell's Election 
Address — His Return for Meath. 

A keen observer of English public opinion near the close of Mr. 
Gladstone's Administration, 1868 to 1873, could easily see that this 
great statesman had " lost the touch " of public sentiment. A visitor 
to the London Clubs, where politics are daily and nightly discussed, 
could notice great despondency among the Liberals and an expressed 
feeling of approaching triumph in the Conservative camp. 

In Liberal circles a certain amount of weariness, of ennui had taken 
possession of the most ardent supporters of the " Grand Old Man." 
The giant energy with which he started out to demolish those castles, 
which he considered barred the road to a thorough union in sentiment 
as well as interest, between the English and Irish peoples, seemed 
vanished into cloudland. When he had succeeded in applying his 
theories to Ireland, he found the application had not the desired result. 
He found to his astonishment that he had not touched the seat of the 
evil which had estranged these hostile races for centuries. One the 
British, who in the flush of what they considered and still consider con- 
quest, tried to mold and shape the destinies of the Irish people to what 
they termed their useful position in the British Empire. The other, the 
Irish, never admitted that they were a conquered race, never gave up 
the struggle ; the war which commenced on the landing of Strongbow 
continues to this hour. Mr. Gladstone found his Irish Church Bill and 
his Land Bill had settled nothing. Ireland was in no way benefited by 
either measure but remained still dissatisfied and hostile. The Irish 
people had heard so often of these false phantoms, called stepping stones 
to liberty, that when they gazed upon the stream which these were 
supposed to bridge over, they saw that it was too deep and rapid, these 
airy British footholds were carried away by the fierce torrent of nation- 
ality and the broad river flowed on in its uninterrupted course, leaving 

41 



42 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

a wide and yawning gulf that can only be crossed by one means — means 
which are as old as the days of Joshua and the Israelites, and even then 
had been practiced by preceding generations. 

English public sentiment was estranged from Mr. Gladstone's Adminis- 
tration for many causes, but more especially that they had not satisfied 
the Irish people after all the so-called sacrifices made for them by the 
English voters. This extraordinary delusion under which the British 
people labor is partly the fault of a large section of the Irish who, led 
away by the illusory picture painted by their Provincialist agitators, some 
honest and some selfish, are seeking for an impossibility — good laws 
from the Alien Parliament in London i. e., good poison to strengthen the 
Irish people. 

Mr. Gladstone had conferred upon England a great number of useful 
measures. His endeavor to throw open the army to merit, not cash or 
caste, had a democratic tendency ; but owing to the conditions of social 
life in Britain, the results did not equal the expectations. His great boon 
to the British people was a pure system of voting by ballot, which is to 
this day as nearly perfect a system as human ingenuity can devise. 

Somehow John Bull tires of one party continuing long in power. The 
great changes which from time to time take place in British Administra- 
tions are not always the offspring of genuine cause for dissatisfaction. 

Mr. Gladstone's government had irritated the English people by many 
petty acts, which their political opponents did their best to magnify. 
Mr. Lowe, Chanceller of Exchequer, then familiarly spoken ,of by the 
English people as " Bobby Lowe," did a great deal to help this dissatisfac- 
tion, not only by his cold, insolent manner to the people, but in addition by 
the introduction of his unpopular match tax. This tax caused a great 
commotion among the London poor who make a livelihood in selling 
matches. So great was the excitement in London and the provinces at the 
mention of this unpopular tax that Mr. Lowe was compelled to abandon it. 

Mr. Ayrton, the Commissioner of Public Works, also brought the 
Administration into disfavor by his numerous petty tyrannies and over- 
bearing haughty demeanor, when questioned in the House. Mr. Glad- 
stone was at this time especially unfortunate in his colleagues. 

The production of a burlesque in one of the leading London theaters 
foretold the downfall of the Ministry ; there is no weapon so potent as 
ridicule. This burlesque introduced Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Lowe, and Mr. 
Ayrton as three benign fairies, who having discovered a paradise 
of peaceful retreat and happiness, visited this mundane world on the 
philanthropise mission of bringing the inhabitants to the enjoyment of this 
Utopian paradise. The usual topical songs were introduced, touching 
with keen satire on different Government measures. The actors who 
impersonated the Premier and the other statesmen were inimitable in 
their get-up ; they dressed and acted the character to life, introducing all 
the mannerisms of their illustrious prototypes. The press was filled with 
columns of notices of this new burlesque, and crowded houses nightly 
testified to its immense popularity. The Lord Chamberlain interdicted 
the political representations in the play, to the astonishment of the public. 
This was very unusual in free Britain ; it drew upon the Administration 
the satire of society, theatrical, and political journals. 

Several by-elections having gone against Mr. Gladstone he dissolved 
Parliament on January 24, 1874. The Liberal Premier used every exer- 
tion to get from the English people a renewal of power. His leading 
argument was financial management of the affairs of the Empire, and if 
given a renewal of confidence by the vote of the country Mr. Gladstone 
promised the abolition of the income tax, a huge bid for popular support. 

Mr. Disraeli, the leader of the Opposition, had styled the Liberal 



BRITISH PARTIES. 43 

Administration a government of "blundering and plundering," which 
epigrammatic expression was re-echoed on every hustings. He also 
accused Mr. Gladstone of gross mismanagement of England's foreign 
policy- — always a weak spot in Liberal Administrations. In addition he 
accused him of serious neglect of British interests on the west coast of 
Africa, which resulted in the Ashantee War — a war then in progress and 
which brought to public notice the services of the commander of the 
expedition, Sir Garnet Wolseley, afterward styled England's " great and 
only" general. 

It is a remarkable study fn English history that Liberal Governments, 
which are supposed to settle foreign and colonial questions by arbitration 
and are essentially a party of peace, have been engaged in more petty 
wars than the Tories, who, in spite of all their brazen bluster, are careful 
to yield sooner than fight. 

News of the capture of Coomassie arrived in England, and although 
it was a splendid victory (?) the news arrived too late to save the fortunes 
of the Gladstone government. It however delighted the English people, 
who went into ecstacies of joy at the success gained over those brave, 
half-armed Africans. But the Britons, not taking this into consideration, 
congratulated themselves that they were still the same heroes as their 
brave sires who fought under Nelson and Wellington, still the great 
British nation that could conquer the world in arms. For some time 
after this Coomassie capture Britannia ruled the waves over pipes and beer 
in all the music halls, and did that ruling in a very noisy and boisterous 
manner. 

Mr. Gladstone issued one of his usual lengthy addresses to the elec- 
tors of Greenwich, and entered into an elaborate defense of his Adminis- 
tration. In one part of this address he said : " It may be stated with 
truth that next to the great Irish question of Church and Land, now 
happily disposed of, (?) the election of 1868 turned in no small degree 
upon expenditure." 

The numberless instances like this which have occurred in contempo- 
rary history are of themselves convincing proofs of the folly and fatuity 
of the Provincialists' agitation — a body of men then as now who assume 
the title Nationalist only to mock and make it contemptible in the eyes of 
thinking mankind. This great English Liberal, then in the plenitude of 
of his powers as a man, deliberately states in a state document addressed 
to the British people that the Irish land question was happily disposed of. 
If he believed so, it is proof sufficient Britons must ever remain in willful 
ignorance of Ireland's true position when a man of such eminence as 
William Ewart Gladstone thus expresses his satisfaction at having finally 
and happily settled the Irish land grievance. His bill had no more effect 
upon removing the evils under which the Irish farmer was burdened than 
it had in altering the condition of the people of the Flowery Land. This 
attempt at legislation was wrung from him, by his own admission, by the 
fear of armed insurrection. 

Mr. Disraeli's address to the electors of Buckingham was much 
shorter than that of his Liberal rival. In one part he says : " Generally 
speaking I should say of the Administration of the last five years that it 
would have been better for us all if there had been a little more energy 
in our foreign policy and a little less in our domestic legislation." 

This is the true Tory doctrine. The Conservatives teach the English 
people that at home they enjoy ample liberty, and that England's only 
needs are a vigorous foreign policy. 

At this time in India began one of these periodic curses so frequent 
under British rule. A terrible famine was scourging the land and the 
Indian people were dying of hunger like rotten sheep. 



44 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

A British commission was sent to examine into the causes of the 
famine and to discover the proper remedies to be applied for its relief. 
This commission was a repetition of many similar ones — strangled in red 
tape ; its motto, " How not to do it." In the meantime the hunger was 
spreading in Britain's great Asiatic dependency. 

India, like Ireland, was suffering under that greatest of calamities to a 
nation — foreign conquest. Britain drained the wealth of the country 
away to enrich her own people in their island home, and also the pay- 
ment of a numerous crowd of office holders, who drew enormous salaries, 
and lived and fattened as leeches off the unhappy people of Hindoostan. 

In addition to these civil service cormorants, there is kept in India, 
what for Britain with her miniature army was a large military force, as 
an occupying soldiery to preserve and continue the conquest. This large 
standing army, which since the days of the famous Sepoy mutiny Eng- 
land has been compelled to keep in India to preserve her control there, 
with a host of camp followers, lived off the country in idleness and had to 
be paid out of the so-called Indian revenue, the taxes wrung from the peo- 
ple by order of the Indian Czar, the English Governor General. Instead 
of spending the wealth of India in canals and such means as would 
thoroughly irrigate the country when a season of drought arrived, instead 
of these they built expensive railways for mere strategic purposes, so that 
they could concentrate troops at any threatened point which would appear 
to interfere with the possession of their great Eastern prize. Those 
works of irrigation begun and completed under the Mogul Emperors 
were neglected by the British and permitted to become useless. 

In the course of an address delivered to the electors of Buckingham, 
during the general election, Febuary u, 1874, Mr. Disraeli thus sneer- 
ingly alluded to Ireland : 

" I was convinced that an Englishman remembering that he existed 
only in an island not of collossal size, must frequently have been struck 
with what would have been his situation if he had been an inhabitant of 
some other island to which it is not necessary to particularly refer. . . 
1 must impress upon you that if Ireland is now tranquil it is not in con- 
sequence of those measures [Church and Land], but it is in conse- 
quence of being ruled by coercive legislation of the most severe and the 
most stringent kind. . . I call it severe and stringent legislation and 
which will go on until the year 1875. (Hear, hear.) It is a fact, as I men- 
tioned the other day, that no person can take a walk in the evening with- 
out being liable to be arrested by the military police. It is the fact that 
at any time in Ireland the police may enter your house, and examine 
your papers to see whether they can detect any resemblance between the 
writing they find and some anonymous threatening letter that has been 
sent by a third person. . . To say that if this [Church and Land 
bills] legislation of the government has produced the tranquillity of 
Ireland, where is the necessity for this coercion ?" 

Mr. Disraeli's contention was that Ireland was in a state of peace and 
tranquillity because of the five years of cruel coercion which Mr. Glad- 
stone had inflicted on her, and not because of this so-called remedial 
legislation. When Irishmen peruse the pages of history and learn for 
themselves the uninterrupted series of brutal coercion bills passed into law 
by Mr. Gladstone, and so cruelly administered by his directions when in 
power, they must be amazed at the astounding hypocrisy of the man 
who lectures and condemns his Tory opponents at this time of writing, 
who if restored to power would not be many years in office, when as cer- 
tain as the sun shines in the heavens he would enforce the coercion law 
of the Tories even more cruelly than they have done. This may appear 
to some as if impossible, but let them look back upon the term of Liberal 



BRITISH PARTIES. 45 

coercion 1868 to 1873, when Ireland was unusually tranquil, calmly and 
peacefully bleeding to death. Let them look again at the terrific and 
monstrous cruelties perpetrated by the same miscalled Liberals from 
1880 to 1885 ; read in history what Mr. Parnell and his fellow Provin- 
cialists have said of this cold-blooded and tyrannical Administration, which 
they properly characterized as the most monstrous and brutal Adminis- 
tration under which Ireland has ever groaned. And again look with 
astonishment and wonder at the last short-lived term of this man, this 
great Liberal Minister, then posing before mankind as Ireland's cham- 
pion would-be emancipator, and at the self-same time that honeyed 
words were falling from his tongue, he was not only permitting the 
eviction of the Irish people but was assisting the landlords to pull down 
their roof-trees by the help of the forces of the Crown. 

Mr. Disraeli was so far right in his statements that remedial legisla- 
tion had nothing to do with the tranquillity of Ireland, this calmness of a 
dying nation. But he was equally wrong when he attributed this quiet- 
ness to the power of Mr. Gladstone's coercion. It was the teaching of 
the Provincialists, a movement which has strangled Ireland's hopes of 
freedom, and helped to keep her in bondage for three generations. 
Although the march of education had improved the minds of the people, 
their intelligence was directed toward an evil channel, their ability to 
read and learn for themselves was made use of by the Provincialists, 
who supplied their literature ; their newspapers corrupted the masses by 
their false doctrines under the guise of Nationality. The strength of 
Ireland against the British forces that keep her in bondage is consider- 
ably greater than was the Greek power against the Moslem, or the Ameri- 
can colonies divided as they were by patriots and Tories against the 
then much more powerful Britain than the same nation is to-day. True, 
both countries were helped to independence by the interference in the 
struggle of a foreign power, but Ireland on the chessboard of Europe 
could not be permitted to fight out the quarrel alone. Some of Britain's 
numerous foes would be sure to strike in, and show what a bandbox of 
strength is the boasted power of this bloated and enervated British 
Empire. Like the steed that is held by a slender thong and thinks him- 
self fast — such is the ignorance of Ireland as to her strength under this 
destructive and cowardly teaching, that her people sit supinely by, 
howling and bawling at the Tories, which their teachers tell them is 
work, while the emigrant ship is destroying their strength — a destruction 
threefold more numerous than a gallant struggle for liberty could possibly 
inflict. The blessing of a little education, the power to read now pos- 
sessed by the poorest peasant, has been made their curse ; they eagerly 
devour the sensational and destructive literature of Parliamentary agitation 
served up to them by the Provincialists, who are perpetually making 
solemn promises before Heaven that freedom is coming, while national 
death — unless arrested by manly action, is as certain as that night will 
succeed the day. 

What Thomas Davis said to John Mitchell, in 1843, remains now and 
forever the only honest advice they can receive. " The study of this 
book," said the great patriot Davis to his sterling and manly colleague, 
pointing to a treatise on artillery, " is the only class of literature Ireland 
needs." 

Who are the teachers and leaders of Ireland at this time of writing? 
Men whose proudest boast is that they are Londoners, men whom the 
seductions and allurement of British society had won over to the enemy, 
and the wealth and social influence which their position as members of the 
enemy's Parliament gave them, aided by their own natural abilities. Their 
country's enslavement was the ladder by which they climbed to promi- 



4 6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

nence, they- have secured a sure footing and now ignore their former 
promises. They come out at this period of writing boldly as followers 
of Gladstone, whom they so bitterly denounced, and are mere British 
partisans denouncing the Tories, and trying to teach the Irish people the 
palpable lie that the Tories are acting without the authority of the British 
people ; when the merest tyro in politics knows full well that these Tories 
would not be in office but for the enormous majority vote of the English 
masses. To further deceive their Irish countrymen in Ireland, they col- 
lect together mass meetings of Irishmen in England with a sprinkling of 
British, and tell their people that these gatherings are British workingmen 
who sympathize with Ireland. Ireland needs light and truth to dispel the 
darkness and ignorance these men are trying to spread over the enslaved 
island. 

In the general election of the spring of 1874 which ensued after Mr. 
Gladstone's appeal to the country, Mr. Butt and the Home Rule party were 
most energetic in trying to get their representatives elected for the various 
Irish constituencies, that are so mockingly said to be represented in the 
enemy's Parliament. The same teaching as is heard to this day was 
preached all over Ireland. Give Mr. Butt a large majority of the Irish 
representation and he would overwhelmingly convince the British by 
his arguments that Ireland demanded and needed self-government. No 
Ministry could withstand the strain that the Home Rule party could 
put upon them, and Home Rule must be the result. And then the Irish 
members about to be elected would be the last Ireland would need to 
send with such a demand to London. They would next be electing 
members to legislate for themselves in College Green. 

The Irish people and their teachers completely ignore the lessons of 
history, that never since the creation has an enslaved nation argued the 
conqueror to surrender his spoils peacefully. 

Filled with the delusive teachings instilled into them, a great majority 
of the Irish electorate returned Provincialists to sit in the London Parlia- 
ment, and to further the energies of that brilliant and able lawyer, Mr. 
Isaac Butt. The Provincialists can never accuse the Irish people for 
their many failures, for they always contributed by energetic labor to 
the election of these men. The return of so many followers of Mr. 
Butt gave the Gladstonites, Irish and British, a good opportunity to 
call Ireland a nation of ingrates, after receiving what they termed 
these priceless boons the Church and Land bills, and so spoken of by 
many of the Provincialists before coming into law — a Land Bill which 
the English farmers did not enjoy ; ungrateful Ireland was now opposing 
the Liberal candidates by Home Rulers. They defeated Mr. Gladstone's 
Irish Chief Secretary, the kindly disposed Mr. Chichester Fortescue, the 
most lenient (so called) administrator of a coercion act that Ireland had 
known for a long time ; but then as a British Minister he was compelled 
to administer coercio'n. He was an exact counterpart of Mr. Gladstone's 
last Chief Secretary, who introduced and passed the coercion act termed 
"Peace Preservation Act," which coercion he would be compelled to 
administer, had he remained in office. Mr. Fortescue, like the much 
praised Mr. Morley, would give Ireland the same amount of self-govern- 
ment, which means subjection to British authority. Praising any British 
Minister is like saying good poison ; their business in Ireland as rulers 
means foreign despotism of a greater or less degree ; if self-government 
on their lips were anything but mocking, gibing phrases, their presence 
in Ireland in any capacity would be unnecessary. His (Mr. Morley's) 
speeches, at the time we write, have the same meaning as Mr.Chamberlain's 
a few years back. The London Times of February 16, 1874, writing on 
the then Irish elections, observes : " Rejection of Mr. Chichester Fortescue 



BRITISH PARTIES. 47 

at Louth is a painful illustration of Irish ingratitude. No Administration 
has done so much to remedy the evil effects of past misrule and to attach 
the inhabitants of Ireland to Parliamentary government, and no Adminis- 
tration has been so ill requited for its pains and sacrifices. . . ." 

The Gladstone Government received a crushing defeat at the polls. 
The Tory majority was 54, counting the Home Rulers as Liberals. The 
Irish elected under the banner of self-government were 61 members, 
which would place the Liberals in a minority of 176 if they should find 
occasion to vote with the Tories. 

Among the prominent men elected by the Irish people that election 
was the father of obstruction, Joseph Biggar, and of the sixty-one Home 
Rulers then elected Mr. Biggar, Sir Joseph N. McKenna, and Captain 
Nolan are all that are remaining to-day (1887) among the followers of 
Mr. Parnell. 

Mr. Gladstone resigned office February 17, 1874. Mr. Disraeli was 
sent for by the Queen to form a new Administration. The Irish Liberal 
electors of Greenwich had supported Mr. Gladstone in the recent election 
with the expressed understanding that the remaining Irish political 
prisoners would be liberated. Previous to his resignation they sent him 
a letter, asking for their release ; he replied through one of his secretaries, 
stating that the result of the election debarred him from discussing the 
question. An English Minister, even though an election foreshadows 
his defeat, can, if he chooses, meet Parliament and test his Government by 
a vote of the House. He retains all the prerogatives of his high office 
until he places his resignation in the hands of his sovereign. Mr. Glad- 
stone, after this election, used his power as Minister by making several 
appointments before his resignation. He elevated some of his followers 
to the peerage, notably two Irish representatives, Mr. Monsell as Lord 
Emly, and Mr. Fortescue the rejected of Louth as Lord Carlingford. 
Mr. Palles, one of his Irish law officers, he elevated to the vacant judg- 
ship Chief Baron of the Exchequer. He could reward his followers, but 
when his signature to a document releasing the Irish political prisoners 
was required of him, he pleaded as excuse the result of the elections. 

Mr. Gladstone was never yet known to do a gracious action toward 
Ireland ; he never introduced what was meant to be a good measure for 
that country but it was accompanied by some drawback in the shape of 
coercion. Those of the Fenian prisoners he liberated in the early portion 
of his coming to power, he hampered with such conditions that took 
away from the act anything of clemency that could be attributed to him. 
He exiled them to a foreign country, and would not permit them to 
visit father, mother, sister, brother, wife, sweetheart, or child, or revisit 
even for a short time the beloved land for which they suffered. After 
years spent in England's convict prisons, their only glance of Ireland 
was from the deck of the steamer that visited Queenstown en route to 
America. 

The Home Rule Association of Deptford was very indignant at his 
refusal to amnesty the remaining prisoners. Presided over by Dr. 
Kavanagh, a former great admirer of Mr. Gladstone, the following 
resolution was introduced ; it was proposed by Mr. Coleman, seconded 
by Mr. King, and carried unanimously : " That we, the Irish Home 
Rule Branch of Deptford, representing as we do the organized Irish 
electoral element of the borough of Greenwich, have heard with surprise 
and regret the refusal of Mr. Gladstone to receive a deputation from the 
Irish electors of Greenwich in favor of an amnesty to our countrymen 
who are imprisoned for their political opinions ; that this last act of Mr. 
Gladstone is a further insult to Irish feeling, and an unhandsome mani- 
festation of ingratitude toward us, who were instrumental in securing his 



48 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

election ; that we hereby record our sense of the mistake we made in 
inducing Mr. Nolan to retire from the contest after coming from Dublin 
to oppose Mr. Gladstone, but we did so believing at the time that we 
were best serving the Home Rule cause, and we now pledge ourselves 
that while a single political prisoner is incarcerated, we shall oppose 
every nominee of any Minister whose policy is coercion and vengeance 
toward Ireland." 

After all these lessons this man, Mr. Gladstone, is the idol of a large 
section of the Irish race to-day. But like the men of Deptford they will 
find out their mistake. Then will come another rude awakening. 

A meeting of the newly elected Irish members was called by circular 
to meet on Tuesday, March 3, 1874, to devise in what manner the Irish 
demand was to be placed before Parliament. 

The Dublin Freeman anticipated the meeting of the Irish members 
would "result in the formation of a Parliamentary party that will be 
strong enough to assert the claims of Ireland to self-government with 
success." 

It may be said that asserting Ireland's claim to self-government with 
success has been frequently done by Mr. O'Connell in years past and by 
many eloquent speakers since his time, and also since his successor Mr. 
Butt died, and possibly, if there are any Irish people left at home, after 
Mr. Parnell passes away. But shaming England by exposing her misrule 
— proving logically that Ireland suffers great injustice by British legisla- 
tion, asserting all these things and that of removing the evils spoken of — 
between the exposure and the redress there lies a great gulf, a chasm 
which all the agitators' words can never bridge over. Ireland does not 
require showing England up, but putting England down. A public 
meeting was held in the Rotunda, March 3, 1874. Mr. Butt spoke just 
as Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Davitt, or Mr. Parnell would to-day, always some 
victory which presaged the final success. Mr. Butt of course declared 
the advent of Irish independence, that independence which would not 
separate Ireland from England, but strengthen and unite the two coun- 
tries — was as certain as the rising of to-morrow's sun. Once they 
convince the people of England that they were not veiled rebels, and 
that all they asked was freedom, and that they were determined to be free 
and live as friends to England, the whole English nation would be with 
them except the corrupt aristocrats, who had some advantage to gain ; 
there would be no defaulters in their Parliamentary ranks the day of Ire- 
land's freedom, and without meaning to lower sacred things he repeated 
the words of the Prophet to another enslaved nation. "Awake ! awake ! 
O daughter of Zion ! lift thyself from the dust ; put on thy glorious 
apparel, cast off the bonds of captivity from thy neck and be free, for the 
day of thy deliverance is at hand, the day of thy redemption is nigh" — he 
said to the captive daughter of Erin ; " Arise, awake ! Put on thy glorious 
apparel ! lift thyself from the dust ! arise, cast off the chains of slavery 
from thy neck, for oh ! captive daughter of Erin, long enslaved and 
oppressed, seven centuries of thy slavery gone, and surely, oh, surely 
indeed, the day of thy deliverance is at hand — the day of thy redemption 
draweth nigh, arise and rejoice in your liberty ! " 

When Irish Nationalists read these beautiful orations and reflect what 
a strangely credulous race they are addressed to, they must sometimes 
despair of their people's redemption. Mr. Butt had as much foundation 
to promise Ireland the near approach of her redemption as the agitators 
of to-day, who are leading the people astray, preaching to them that their 
English enemy is to aid them to recover their stolen freedom. Mr. Butt 
speaks of the corrupt aristocrats, as the present Parliamentarians do, as 
an obstacle to Irish self-government. The facts are that the predominat- 



BRITISH PARTIES. 49 

ing interests that need Ireland's subjection are the traders, the manufac- 
turers, and shopocracy of Britain. It is their votes and that of the 
British mechanic who have returned the Tory regime in power at this 
date, September, 1887. 

At the close of the great Buttite meeting, a roll of honor was produced 
to be signed by the members, something similar to the Parnell pledge. 
John Martin was the first to affix his signatnre to that document. 

Honest, faithful John Martin, would that all who signed their names 
there that day had thy truth, simplicity, and loyalty to country ! But like 
to-day, there were many mere party politicians in that Home Rule gathering. 

The new Parliament met. Mr. Disraeli had completed his cabinet, 
and the usual so-called Queen's speech was read. Mr. Butt moved an 
amendment to the address, asking the House to appoint a committee to 
inquire into the existing relations between Britain and Ireland. Mr. 
Butt made an able and eloquent appeal, showing up to Englishmen the 
oft-repeated tale of Irish grievances. In the course of an interesting 
debate on Mr. Butt's Irish Home Rule, Mr. Gladstone observed : " He 
says he brings a perfectly intelligible plan by which affairs exclusively 
Irish are to be discussed in an Irish Parliament, and affairs exclusively 
English are to be discussed in this Parliament, and the members repre- 
senting Ireland are to come here for that purpose. . . I want to know 
in what portion of his plan are we guaranteed against the danger that our 
friends from Ireland, who shall be vested with exclusive power over the 
consideration of Irish affairs in Dublin, may come here to meddle with 
affairs exclusively English and Scotch." 

These remarks of Mr. Gladstone will be read with interest in the 
face of a somewhat similar proposition of his own ; how inconsistent 
both English statesmen and Irish agitators are in this international issue ! 
Of course Mr. Butt's motion was defeated ; but the repeated rejections 
of Home Rule measures make no difference to Irish "legal and con- 
stitutional " agitators ; they call such refusals victories, and our deluded 
countrymen believe them. 

A question put by an Irish member to Sir Michael Hicks Beach, then 
Irish Chief Secretary, revealed some of the horrors of Mr. Gladstone's 
Coercion Bill. 

A young Irishman, Patrick Casey, had suffered three years' imprison- 
ment, and his health was failing under the prolonged confinement. He 
went into prison a fine stalwart young fellow of twenty-two years. He 
was at the time attention was drawn to his case a prematurely aged, 
feeble, and sickly man. He had been imprisoned for two years in that 
dungeon of horrors, Naas jail. He was next transferred to Kilmainham 
prison, where he had been incarcerated for the succeeding twelve months. 
This young man, Patrick Casey, was never accused of any offense, never 
brought to trial, never had an opportunity of defending himself ; by the 
despotic act of one of Mr. Gladstone's officials, he was deprived of his 
liberty and brutally treated in prison. The Tory Government, cruel as 
all English governments are in Ireland, against which Mr. Gladstone 
inveighed with mock virtue, never could exceed or equal the cold, callous 
cruelty of this Heaven-sent Liberal leader. 

Oh, horror of horrors to Irishmen are British dungeons, where the 
unfortunate victims are diabolically treated, driven to death and madness 
by refined cruelty in these English Bastilles and under the regime of 
Ireland's savior, Mr. Gladstone ! 

How often do Irishmen unthinkingly condemn the extravagance of 
expression and lack of judgment in the words and deeds of some of 
their liberated countrymen ! Think of their sufferings and have some 
pity on account of their cruel past. 



50 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The new Irish party was now fully organized with its own leader, 
whips, and other officers, but for all it affected the fortunes of Ireland it 
might have been as much merged into the Liberal party as its predeces- 
sor or as the eighty-six Parnellites are at this date. 

Mr. Butt brought forward his Home Rule motion on June 30, 1874. 
The British Ministry set up their Irish Attorney General to give it a 
most emphatic refusal. Mr. Ball, the British mouthpiece, gave Eng- 
land's reply, which was as effective as the reply of the English masses at 
the last election (1886). He said that a clear, distinct, and emphatic 
decision on the question now submitted to their consideration was 
imperatively demanded. That decision should be the answer of the 
Government, which for the time represented the feelings and opinions of 
the people of this country. For that reason he should give decided and 
emphatic negative to all the propositions that had been offered by 
the honorable member who had just spoken. If there existed a power- 
ful nation in immediate contiguity to a weaker one there was no safety 
for the weaker nation but incorporation, and no perfect safety for 
the stronger nation either, because the power of each to injure the 
other as long as they were separate renders the result incapable of 
being predicted. But by incorporation they elevated the weaker nation 
without in the least degree taking away from the power of the stronger 
one. The debate continued for two evenings ; the House divided and 
Mr. Butt's motion was defeated by a majority of 397. 

The British Ministry would object to the incorporation of Belgium 
by France or Holland by Germany, but these platitudes about Ireland 
and Britain suited their purpose. Might was right in their case then as 
now. Dr. Ball's emphatic refusal, no less emphatically indorsed by the 
British Commons, is to the Nationalist mind preferable to the hypocritical 
cant which pervades the Liberal ranks to-day and which means for Ireland 
exactly the same results. The peculiar state of mind which results from 
the pursuit of this phantom Home Rule by peaceful methods superinduces 
an additional phantasm which they term victory. No person but one 
crazed with delusions could term this Home Rule defeat by so enormous 
a majority an Irish success ; but we find the Dublin Freeman of August 1, 
1874, claiming that it " Rejoices in the fact that a great victory had been 
won, and that notwithstanding his majority, Mr. Disraeli has shown him- 
self sensible of the sympathy which Irish industry and Irish energy and 
Irish eloquence have evoked by the fame of our country. . . The Irish 
members have learned that there is a real and active sympathy with them 
in the minds of the more independent English and Scotch representatives." 

Where Mr. Disraeli showed his sympathy for either Irish energy or 
eloquence, the Nationalists fail to see, or that of the British members. 
Was it by the novel expedient of voting down Mr. Butt's Home Rule 
motion, as only two British members followed him into the division lobby? 
United Ireland is still preaching the same silly farrago. When a debate 
in the German Reichstag raised by the Alsatian deputies restores to 
France her lost provinces, our friends the agitators will have some- 
thing to show us as one accomplished fact gained by agitation as an argu- 
ment to free nations. 

The year 1875 gave to Ireland sorrowful tidings : the death of two of 
the most faithful of her sons — John Mitchell and John Martin. 

John Mitchell, the stern and uncompromising foe to British rule in his 
native land, after years of wandering in foreign countries came home to 
the green island that gave him birth, to die there. To see once again, 
before the final adieu, the hills and valleys of his boyhood, to revisit the 
quiet town of Newry, the home of his early manhood, and to gaze once 
more with passionate adoration on glorious Rostrevor and the magnificent 



BRITISH PARTIES. 51 

bay of Carlingford, which sweeps in majestic beauty from the coast of 
Louth to that of Down, dotted here and there with villas, havens of quiet 
rest. Towering above like giant sentinels guarding the approaches to 
the bay, stands that magnificent range of hills the Mourne Mountains. 
How often in his distant wanderings has he seen them in his dreams, 
happy once more to feed his eyes upon their beauty and feel all that wor- 
ship which is centred in the exile's heart ! And there can be no exile 
more painful than the knowledge that never more can you see your be- 
loved motherland, never more unless the foreigner is forever banished as a 
ruler. How exquisitely the Irish poet expresses this love of native land : 

No not the richest rose 
In an alien clime that blows, 
Like the briar at home that grows 
Is dear. 

An exile banished from Ireland, a felon in chains for endeavoring to 
spur his countrymen to manhood and resistance ; trying if possible to 
eradicate the false teachings of the O'Connell era, which culminated in an 
artificial famine the most horrible known in history. The scenes of poverty 
and degradation which Ireland then witnessed made many Irishmen exclaim 
— ''Better to have died facing Blakeney's guns at Clontarf." This was in 
reference to O'Connell's meeting announced to be held there, and which 
the British Czar in Dublin Castle proclaimed late on Saturday night, send- 
ing his armed forces under Sir Edward Blakeney to enforce the order. 
Cannon were shotted and every preparation made for slaughter, but 
owing to O'Connell's and his friends' exertions the meeting was not held. 
The most sanguinary revolution the world has ever seen could not pro- 
duce a tithe of the horrors or deaths of this black era in Ireland's sad 
history. John Mitchell left the shores of Ireland a prisoner, when all was 
indeed dark and gloomy, and after an absence of twenty-six years he 
returned to find even more gloom and wretchedness than when he left his 
beloved country. Concessions so-called even by some Irishmen had been 
granted by the British Parliament, concessions which conceded nothing, 
as if in mockery carrying on a delusion to ensnare the politically unedu- 
cated patriotic hearts of the Irish masses. 

John Mitchell found, notwithstanding the great natural increase of 
the Irish race, a reduced population, a steady flow of emigration taking 
away the bone and sinew of Ireland's young manhood, as there are no 
industries at home to give them employment ; and how bitter it must have 
been to him, after the many years of his banishment, to return and learn 
that the Irish people were still pursuing that phantom "legal and moral 
agitation." With what a feeling of hope and love of motherland the 
politically exiled feel in the strong conviction — which is after all a dream 
— that their sufferings and banishment will not be fruitless ; that those 
at home will have learned the lesson that by deeds and deeds alone can 
their suffering country be restored to her place among the nations ; that 
the hue of health can be brought back to her pallid cheeks by the labors 
and sufferings of her sons, and by that means alone; and if ever the dream 
of the political exile is to be realized it can be by that course which freed 
other peoples in our own time. 

Mtvourneen be thou long 
In peace the Queen of Song, 
In battle proud and strong 

As the Sea 
Be saints thine offspring still, 
There heroes guard each hill, 
And harps by every rill 

Sound free. 



52 1 HE IRISH NATIONAL INV1NCIBLES. 

John Mitchell was the great prominent leader of the '48 move- 
men; his character stands out in bold relief and towers in giant strength 
above his associates. He was of the true metal out of which revolution- 
ary leaders are created. Had his advice been taken Ireland would have 
appealed to arms in '48. His departure for Australia without the 
slightest attempt at rescue on the part of the National leaders was an 
instance of cowardice and vacillation which proved they were mere tyros 
in revolutionary knowledge. The attempt might have been suppressed by 
the superiority in weapons and skill of the enemy, but it would have pro- 
duced even in defeat grand results. Some people may say insanity and 
useless shedding of blood ; will these good people try and recollect that 
Britain is not at peace — neither has she been since Strongbow's time — 
with Ireland ? She is carrying on war against the Irish people more 
destructive in its unhappy sequel than any loss of life Ireland could possi- 
bly sustain by armed resistance. Let those who speak of the folly of 
insurrection in '48 remember the countless graves of the period, the 
deep pits filled with the coffinless dead when Ireland was a huge char- 
nel house. In all the wars of Napoleon with their hecatomb of lives, they 
dwindle into insignificance beside the horrors and destruction of this 
British-made plague. For at the hour our people were dying of starva- 
tion, Irish food was being shipped to the English markets. Irish prod- 
uce during that so-called famine year would have fed her popula- 
tion were they twice told ! On the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, three 
thousand miles across, are strewn in heaps the skeletons of these famished 
murdered Irish, who sailed away in the floating coffins of that period ; 
others died in numbers in fever hospitals shortly after their landing on 
these hospitable shores of America. 

Let not Irishmen cry out in the prevailing cant that it was landlordism. 
No, Irishmen, it was not the landlords — as well blame the lash and not 
the hand that wields it ; it was foreign rule which made landlordism 
possible. Landlordism is one of its weapons, but not the greatest, by 
which Britain hurls death and destruction on your people. Go to the 
fountainhead, the source of this infamy, and brand it there where it 
belongs — British rule. 

British rule, permitted and encouraged by the British people, who are 
responsible before God and man for the murders of that day as they are 
for the murders of our people up to the present hour. 

John Mitchell, unchanged and uncompromising to the last, saw on 
his return to his native land his country still struggling in her death 
throes — a decimated people flying from a poverty-stricken, decaying 
nation ; blessed with all the beauties and loveliness God has ever given 
any land ; cursed in all the cruelties that man could bring to aid in her 
destruction. The signs of her continued decay were plainly visible to 
the dying patriot's eyes. On March 24, 1875, in his brother-in-law's 
house, Dromalane, near Newry, John Mitchell breathed his last. There 
then passed away from us one of Ireland's most devoted sons and one of 
England's most hostile foes. He was the soul and spirit of the '48 era, 
the man that lent tone and dignity to a sad page in his country's history. 

There was one mourner at his grave whom death was soon to claim 
as his own — the dead leader's brother-in-law, John Martin ; honest, 
incorruptible John Martin, Mitchell's fellow-patriot and felon. The 
English Minister, Mr. Gladstone, could use no sophistry to change this 
steadfast Irishman ; he fully comprehended what was meant by the bitter 
lesson of hypocritical English Liberal promises when in opposition to be 
canceled by cruelties or hollow acts of so-called concession when in 
power. He remembered Lord John Russell's wonderful speech in 
defense of Ireland and her people, and the scathing manner he 



BRITISH PARTIES. 53 

denounced the brutal Tory Government who coerced her ; but he also 
recollected that when the same Liberal Minister had been scarcely more 
than restored to office, Englishman-like, regardless of his promises, he 
brought in and passed the Treason Felony Act, under which many Irish- 
men, himself and his dead friend included, were quickly transported as 
felons. 

No British blandishments or treacherous promises from any Minister 
could make John Martin deviate a hair's breadth from the course he had 
marked out for himself in the service of his country. 

This broken-hearted friend of the dead Mitchell felt he could not long 
survive him. His pale tearless face gazed with agony into the grave 
where his friend's coffin was placed ; he felt that in that patriot's grave 
lay buried his every hope of life. He got sick during the funeral serv- 
ice and was led away feeble and staggering. He took to bed in the 
house in Dromalane near Newry where John Mitchell recently died, and 
soon, very soon, the gentle spirit of John Martin went back to his 
Creator, and Ireland mourned another pure and patriotic son. 

In an ancient and quiet graveyard not far from Newry sleep all that 
is mortal of these illustrious men. Should Emmet's tomb ever rise in 
that Niobe of nations, Ireland, none more pure of heart, self-sacrificing, 
and devoted of her loyal sons than these immortal patriots can be given 
a niche in the great National monument. 

May the rains and dews of Heaven that kiss into green freshness the 
verdure of these grassy mounds, beneath which they sleep in that Irish 
churchyard, soon witness — and soon it must be, if at all — the resurrection 
of the Irish nation, the goal, ambition, and love of their lives. 

The Irishman of April 3, 1875, had an obituary article, it concluded 
as follows : 

" They gazed upon the sun of justice and they met the storms of perse- 
cution, therefore have their lives been radiant and their deaths mourned 
by a people whose feet are upon every shore of the rounded globe. For 
the same Lord liveth eternal who promised of old time to those who 
should draw out their souls to the afflicted that their light should rise in 
obscurity and their darkness be as the noonday. By the fire-touched 
lips of Isaiah he revealed it to comfort an oppressed nation, saying : 
' Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy righteousness 
shall go before thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.' 

" To them was given with the pain of suffering the solace of unselfish 
acts and the consolation of good deeds. The felon's lowly fate opened 
to them the gates of the higher life. The dungeon's gloom endowed them 
with a newer and keener insight into the hidden marvels of the world as 
they who shrouded in a cavern's blackness can discern through the garish 
noon the tremulous light of distant stars. The horizon of life was broad- 
ened, its zenith lifted up, its scope enlarged, and its whole sphere made 
more wondrous beautiful before the new powers of the expanded soul. 
No voice of a bird lost in the blue empyrean fell down to earth unheeded 
where they moved. From the shaggy wood no snow-white flash of torrent 
failed to thrill their souls, nor did twilight pool o'er-arched by feathery 
lady-fern nor the sapphire sparkle of violets by the mossy oak escape a 
gracious glance. Never did more clear-eyed poets worship the spangled 
sky." 

The death of John Martin caused a vacancy in the representation of 
Meath, and Mr. Butt fulfilled his promise by causing Mr. Parnell's name 
to be put in nomination. Meath being a Provincialist constituency this 
was almost equivalent to an election. At the meeting of the electors, 



54 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Mr. Parnell was proposed by the Rev. Mr. Tormy, C. C, and seconded 
by Mr. Kirk, M. P. Mr. Parnell made a short address, in which he 
•advocated " fixity of tenure and fair rents, without which the country 
■could not be prosperous." Mr. Parnell was accepted as the National 
■candidate. Mr. Hinds, a Home Ruler, was not satisfied and determined 
to go to the polls. Three names were before the electors of Meath : 

Mr. Parnell (Peoples' Candidate). Proposed by Rev. U. Behan, 
C. C, and Mr. Ennis, M. P. 

Mr. Hinds (Home Ruler). Proposed by Mr. Gerald Hubert and 
Mr. Patrick Ennis. 

Mr. Napier (Conservative). Proposed by Mr. Thomas Gerrard and 
Mr. John Leonard. 

Mr. Parnell was received with great enthusiasm ; his election struggle 
against the Tory, Colonel Taylor, and the reputation of his great name 
made him popular. Several bands came down from Dublin to make gay 
and rejoice over the nomination of Mr. Butt's candidate. Mr. Butt was 
then in the zenith of his popularity. The devotion of the Irish to great 
orators is proverbial. Mr. Parnell in his election address was compelled 
to be a pensioner on his dead ancestors. The following was part of the 
usual election manifesto of principles: " My ancestor, Sir John Parnell, 
was the advocate, in the old Irish Parliament, of the removal of the disabili- 
ties which affected his Catholic fellow-countrymen, and that in the evil 
days of corruption which destroyed the independence of Ireland ; he lost a 
great office and refused a peerage to oppose the fatal measure of Union." 

Mr. Parnell, in addressing the Meath electors, spoke of the land laws 
and of the necessity of improving the condition of the farmer, fore- 
shadowing the giant land movement which soon after followed, but 
which, unlike the mountain in labor, has not even produced a mouse of 
advantage to the farming community. It is strange how we never hear 
from the lips of agitators anything concerning the loss of Ireland's trade 
and manufactures, unless in a sentimental and incidental way. But no 
moral suasionist so far has attempted to start an organization to restore 
them, though they are of vastly greater importance to Ireland than the 
land grievance. Of course it would be Quixotic to attempt such a 
means to build up Irish manufactures in the face of British power, but 
not more so than to think that the land question could be so solved. Mr. 
Parnell was triumphantly returned for Meath, and from that time com- 
menced the career of a new Parliamentary leader, whose era was as 
eventful as either the O'Connell or Butt epochs. 



CHAPTER IV. 

(1S75.) 

THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT THE GRAVE OF IRISH PATRIOTISM. 

Coercion for Ireland — Introduced by the Tories — Vain Change of Ministers — Britain's - . 
Twin Blessings to Ireland : Hunger and Hardship — Mr. Gladstone Resigns the 
Leadership of his Party — Mr. Gladstone's Pamphlet on Vaticanism — Its Reception in 
Ireland — Dublin Freeman Attacks Mr. Gladstone — Marquis of Hartington Elected 
Leader — Mr. Parnell's First Appearance as Member for Meath — His Reception in 
the House — Debate on the Coercion Bill — Mr. Biggar Commences Obstruction — 
Scene During Mr. Biggar's Long Speech — The Pile of Blue Books — Mr. Parnell's 
Maiden Speech in the House — He Denounces Coercion — The Irish Farmers — The 
Farm Laborers — The Royal Irish Constabulary — Ireland's Great Need Manufactures 
— Mr. Biggar Notices Strangers in the House — A Scene — The Speaker — Prince of 
Wales Compelled to Retire — Coercion Bill in Committee — Irish Chief Secretary and 
Mr. Butt — Mr. Butt Thanks Sir Michael Hicks Beach — Irishmen in the Enemy's 
Parliament Lost to Ireland — The O'Donoghue — His Past — His Change in Parliament 
— Mr. O'Connor Power — His Early Nationality — His Destruction in Parliament — No 
Place for Irishmen. 

The Tory Government had scarce enjoyed twelve months of power 
when they introduced a consolidated Coercion Bill for Ireland, including 
in, its provisions all the scattered drastic remedies, of Mr. Gladstone's 
previous measures. 

Vain change of Ministers ! It makes no difference to suffering Ire- 
land which of Britain's great parties are in power, the ebbing of her life tide 
goes on steadily, the fever stricken cabins are filled annually by England's 
twin blessings to Ireland — Hunger and Hardship. The famine graves 
and the workhouse must be fed. The emigrant ships bring away their 
yearly drain of the young and stalwart, who go forth to be lost in other 
interests, and of whom but a small percentage remains faithful to their 
motherland. In the next generation fewer still ; many of these young 
men sneer in ignorance at their father's country. There are many noble 
and patriotic exceptions but they are, alas ! only a small minority of the 
Irish people who leave their native land. 

Will Irishmen ever rise to the dignity of saying to British parties with 
united voice — a plague on both your Houses ? 

In the early part of the year 1875, much to the chagrin of the Liberal 
party, Mr. Gladstone resigned his position as leader of Her Majesty's 
Opposition. The leading Liberals used every argument to try and dis- 
suade him, but they found all persuasion useless; he had made up his 
mind that in the future he would become a private member, only to 
occasionally revisit the House. He expressed a wish to devote his leisure 
time to literature. 

It was during this period of repose that his reputation as a wood 
cutter dawned upon the world, and was spread broadcast on the wings 
of the press, both in the cartoons of Punch, and in the Illustrated London 
News. At the present day we are told his son, with the shop-keeping 
instincts of his race, finds a ready market, as souvenirs, for the chips 
which fall from the ax of his illustrious father. 

Mr. Gladstone felt very keenly the crushing defeat inflicted on his 
administration by the general election of 1874. He was greatly irri- 
tated with the action of his hitherto obedient servants, the Irish mem- 

55 



$6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

bers — a position they have now, November, 1887, resumed — in placing 
his government in a minority on the Irish University Bill. 

One of the first books which he produced during his retirement, was 
his famous pamphlet entitled " Vaticanism," in which he attacked the 
Roman Catholic dogma of Papal infallibility. It was, to say the least, a 
very curious and strange proceeding on the part of an ex-Liberal 
Premier, to make so wanton and uncalled for an attack on the religion of 
the great majority of the Irish people, and to so insultingly write upon a 
subject on which he must have known they were so extremely sensitive, 
and one which they would feel compelled to resent. He acted with 
lack of judgment for a great statesman, and displayed a bitter and 
vindictive mood when he relinquished the leadership of his party, doing 
this at a time when that party most needed his services in almost the 
very hour of their defeat at the polls. He acted as if animated 
by petty spite toward the English people — a feeling which finds no 
room in the breasts of the truly great. He thought that they were 
ungrateful to him for his great services, and that they had inflicted 
upon him undeserved humiliation by the immense majorities they 
cast against his administration. With the extension of the franchise, 
which he believed he was the indirect author of, and the pure ballot 
system of voting he had given them, he could not believe it possible 
there could be recorded against him such a sweeping verdict. It was 
the huge vote that went to his opponents which increased and intensified 
his bitterness. 

He was in this angry mood and looking around for some object to 
strike, when he selected the Irish as the most fitting subjects on which to 
vent his ill feeling, and the result was this book, " Vaticanism." He 
knew it would madden and irritate the Irish Catholics, and more par- 
ticularly that section which has always helped the Liberal party in Parlia- 
ment and at the polls. The Dublin Freeman, which might almost have 
■been considered his organ, and which usually sang his praises in every 
mood and tense, retorted in an able article. It wondered what madness 
possessed him to write such a pamphlet, attacking the faith of his Irish 
supporters, he, a possible British Prime Minister in the near future. But a 
very little time passed away when the i Freeman and its constituents for- 
got this pamphlet, so that Mr. Gladstone was right in his estimation of 
these men, and could thoroughly appreciate their innate toadyism, no 
matter how he spurned or kicked them. The idol has been restored to 
its accustomed throne, and offerings of flowers and incense are presented _ 
-at its altar. The cry of the agitators has changed to "All hail! Grandest' 
of Grand Old Men ! " 

The Liberal statesmen held a meeting to select one of their number 
to succeed Mr. Gladstone as leader of the party ; then, as since, he has 
towered in intellect and ability above his colleagues ; they knew it was 
impossible to replace him by a kindred genius. The two leading candi- 
dates, over whom the Liberals were divided, were Mr. W. E. Forster and 
the Marquis of Hartington. After consideration, they decided on the 
latter, and accordingly Lord Hartington was elected leader of the 
party, to conduct the business of Her Majesty's Opposition in the 
House of Commons. 

The great debate on the second reading of the Tory Coercion Act for 
Ireland was set down for Thursday, April 22, 1875. It was on that 
evening Mr. Parnell took the oath and his seat as member for Meath. 
As the successor of John Martin advanced to the Speaker's chair, he was 
received with loud and continued applause by the Irish members. Few 
there that night could dream to what peculiar prominence in Irish poli- 
tics that quiet young man would be elevated. His icy, cold manner, so 



BRITISH PARLIAMENT THE GRAVE OF IRISH PATRIOTISM. 57 

different from the usual impulsive Irishman, was noticed, and has been 
by many since, as not to Mr. Parnell's advantage in the making of personal 
friends. No one could anticipate the important position he would eventu- 
ally assume as the public leader of the Irish Provincialists. It was a 
curious coincidence of time, that British coercion for his country was 
then being debated in that foreign assembly when the young member for 
Meath crossed its portal. At that time he was full of hope and ambition 
for the future, determined to pursue with energy and intelligence a cer- 
tain path, which he had mapped out for himself. How often must he 
have since in the solitude of his own chamber, when words to conceal the 
thoughts are useless — how often there has he had to admit to himself 
that, to arrive at the looked for goal, rocks that bar the way must be 
blown up and trees and brushwood cut down to clear the path ! Words 
•cannot accomplish this ; it is impossible ; there must be blows, or else certain 
failure. Another event of that night was Mr. Biggar's first speech as an 
Obstructionist. The English members could not understand Mr. Biggar's 
tactics, for with one notable exception, when Mr. Gladstone exhausted 
the rules of Parliament with the avowed purpose of blocking a measure 
(which he disapproved of), obstruction was a thing unknown in the British 
Commons. As a rule it was a very exclusive assemblage of Britons, 
and one of the most often pronounced assertions used by the wealthy 
British, when speaking of that Legislature, that it was the first assembly 
of gentlemen in the world. They were soon to be rudely awakened from 
this happy dream ; the newly elected Irish members, or rather it should be 
said some few of their number, were determined that if they could not 
shape the Irish legislation they would give the Briton as much trouble 
and annoyance in making these obnoxious laws as possible. Mr. Biggar, 
before making his first great effort in Parliament, provided himself with 
a number of blue books, out of which he reads extracts, so that he could 
prolong his speech ; the British members looked aghast as hours rolled 
on, and the honorable member gave no sign of coming to a close. Mr. 
Biggar's voice getting tired, he rested by speaking in a somewhat low tone. 
The Speaker, noticing this, said he must call on the honorable member to 
address the chair ; at present his voice was inaudible. 

Mr. Biggar, who had by this time been addressing the House for three 
hours, said it was not easy to make his voice heard for so long a tune, 
but he would place himself in a more advantageous position. Taking up 
a glass of water, therefore, and a bundle of papers and the blue books, 
he, with some laughter from the Irish members, took his place on one of 
the front Opposition benches above the gangway, a seat only occupied by 
ex-cabinet ministers, or leaders of the Opposition. After speaking for 
another hour he said he did not wish to detain the House at greater 
length, but he hoped he had succeeded in proving to the satisfaction of 
•every man of unprejudiced mind that the proposition of the Government 
was perfectly unreasonable, and that the Government had made out no 
■case for this bill. He concluded at nine o'clock a speech of four hours' 
duration by moving : 

" That in the opinion of this House it is inexpedient to proceed with 
the consideration of a bill re-enacting and modifying detached portions of 
several statutes until it is put into such form as to show clearly and dis- 
tinctly the provisions which are to form part.of the continued and revised 
•code." 

Mr. McKenna, Home Ruler, seconded the amendment offered by 
Mr. Biggar. 

This was the first speech that Mr. Parnell as sitting member of the 
British Commons heard in that chamber ; it was his debut in the midst of 
an interesting scene, and which led up to such a sad and tragic sequel. 



58 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

It was his baptism of fire in the Irish cause, to use these military phrases, 
which Irish Provincialists are apt to use toward Parliamentary debates. 
Mr. Parnell was destined to see some tough struggles in that chamber, 
where pluck and vim were necessary in very trying moments ; but unfor- 
tunately for Irishmen, who were waging this wordy war only'to have one 
result, they were compelled to yield to the overpowering strength of 
numbers. 

It was during the course of this debate that Mr. Parnell made 
his maiden speech in the House in a very noble cause, arguing against 
coercion for his native land. 

Mr. Parnell observed that no arguments had been advanced against the 
amendment of his honorable friend, the member for Cavan. The honorable 
member for Derry, although he argued with the principle of the bill, said he 
should vote in favor of the amendment as being a just and proper one. 
The Chief Secretary for Ireland had of course opposed it, and so also had 
the noble Marquis, who was supposed to lead the Opposition in that 
House. What reason had the honorable member for Derry given for 
approving the principle of the bill ? It was that some coercion was neces- 
sary in his district to prevent Catholics and Protestants from flying at each 
other's throats. But was that any reason why thirty other Irish counties 
should be placed under Coercion laws ? It had been said that some half 
dozen Irish landlords had given it as their opinion that without Coercion 
they could not exercise the rights of property. He had seen Irish land- 
lords sitting in polling-booths as agents for the Conservative candidate, 
and their tenants trembling when they came to vote against that candi- 
date. That was an exercise of the rights of property of which he did not 
think Englishmen would approve. There had not been threatening 
letter-writing of late, or shooting, or agrarian crime, and was that, he 
asked, a time to bring in a Coercion Bill ? Was this a proper time to 
stop all discussion on this measure when Irish members were telling the 
House what the wishes of their constituents with regard to it were? The 
honorable member for Derry County had told the House that the Irish 
tenant farmers of the North were convinced that some remedial measures 
were necessary for the restoration of tranquillity in that part of the 
country. 

He did not profess to speak on behalf of the Irish tenant farmers ; not 
even those living in the black North. They were so locked up in their own 
self-interest as to be inclined to give up the interest of their country to serve 
that of their class. When the proper time came perhaps it would be found 
that he was a truer friend to the tenant farmer than even the honorable 
member for Derry County. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had found 
fault with the language which had been used by the honorable member 
for Derry County, but he did not know who had appointed the honorable 
gentleman the censor of the language used in that House by honorable 
members. But perhaps the Right Honorable gentleman thought that the 
time-honored and ancient Whig-hack would no longer be able to carry 
matters with a high hand in Derry County, and was holding out to him a 
helping hand in the event of thinking about changing his side of the 
House. For his own part, however, he did not think that the honorable 
member was likely to turn his coat, and he was convinced that he would 
always be found where he believed that the interest of his country 
required him. He trusted that the time would arrive when the history of 
the past would be forgotten and all would look forward to a future, in 
which Irishmen would possess equal rights of self-government with the 
people of England and Scotland, and in which England could rely with 
confidence on a truly independent, a truly free, and a t.-uly self-supporting 
nation. 



BRITISH PARLIAMENT THE GRAVE OF IRISH PATRIOTISM. 59 

Mr. Parnell in the course of his speech, in alluding to the Irish 
tenant farmer as selfish, who would sacrifice country for class, says that 
which every Irish Nationalist must with great pain and reluctance endorse. 
The farmers of Ireland who come under the denomination respectable, 
or well to do, are the most unpatriotic portion of the Irish community. 
They have never taken any part as a class in Irish politics unless their 
landed interests were at stake. Those who rent small holdings find that 
their life is one perpetual struggle for existence ; they have little time to give 
their country. From both classes have sprung very good Nationalists — 
some of the finest men Ireland had produced, but these are a very small 
percentage of the farming community. The farmer's sons have invariably 
been good and loyal Irish patriots, before they in turn took to farming 
for themselves. 

Talk of an English garrison of landlords ! Why they would be 
multiplied one hundred fold, if these men's grievances could possibly 
be settled by an alien Parliament. Ireland would then have an addi- 
tional garrison to hold the country for the foreigner. 

As to the farm laborers, they, poor fellows, have always been ready to 
do any good in the Irish cause they were able, self-sacrificing and most 
reliable as a rule, and faithful to death. But, unfortunately, owing to 
their defective education, they are not always intelligent in the course 
they pursue, and are more easily swayed by the addresses of demagogues 
than their town brothers. 

If a British Parliament could solve this land problem — which is impos- 
sible — this latter class would share but little of the benefits the farmer 
would receive. It is only in the legislature of an independent Irish 
nation* that this important land question can be settled to be of sub- 
stantial benefit to the whole community. 

The grievances of the tillers of Irish soil, and their struggles to eke 
out what at best is but a miserable existence, have been written by many 
an able pen within the past few years. But no pen can fully depict the 
horrors and cruelties the Irish peasantry are undergoing through the 
tyranny of rapacious landlords, backed up, aided, and supported by the 
infamies of the invader's rule. Whether it is under the regime of the 
brutal Tory, Salisbury, or the no less cruel but hypocritical Gladstone, 
the evictions continue with heartrending agonies. 

And yet but a portion of the population of Ireland is engaged in 
agriculture. Ireland — without any industries, no national life, no manu- 
factures, all around ruin and decay. What, then, must be the suffering of 
the unhappy townspeople ? Visit any city or town and you see the ruins 
of mills that once flourished and gave employment to the people. You 
see the water power which Nature has so plentifully bestowed upon this 
favored island of heaven running to waste, and you witness numbers of 
idle men standing around leaning against ruined walls, eating their souls 
away in decay like their surroundings. What silent miseries this must 
entail ! Not so public as the agony of evictions, but with the same 
destructive results. Few know of the struggles with poverty and sick- 
ness brought on by lack of nourishment. How many a famine death 
takes place unknown or nearly so to the community, registered under the 
head of some disease — disease originating in hunger ! Absence of man- 
ufactures is the greatest evil of foreign occupation ; the land question is 
but secondary to this frightful evil. 

An incident occurred in the House of Commons that startled English- 
men, and told them that a new class of Irishmen were now in the enemy's 
Parliament. On the evening of Tuesday, April 27, 1875, Mr. Biggar 
rose in his place and called the Speaker's attention to the presence of 
strangers. 



60 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

It was one of the old privileges of the British Parliament to exclude 
all but members at their sittings. This privilege could be exercised by 
any individual member unquestioned. Of course the custom had not only 
fallen into disuse, but was almost completely forgotten. The necessity for 
the presence of newspaper reporters, and the absurdity of exercising the 
privilege unless under grave circumstances, coupled with the conservative 
habits of the British nation, left the laws of Parliament unchanged. When 
Mr. Biggar called the Speaker's attention to the presence of strangers, the 
House was astonished at this strange proceeding. The Speaker said : 
u Do I understand the Honorable member for Cavan to take notice that 
strangers are now present ? " Mr. Biggar : " I do." (Murmurs and cries 
of " Oh ! ") The Speaker : " That being so, I am compelled to give notice 
that strangers must withdraw." The Speaker's and Members' galleries 
were crowded, and were then, at five minutes to five o'clock, soon cleared. 
The reporters were, of course, also compelled to leave. 

The following is said to have transpired when the House was cleared : 
Mr. Biggar explained that he was impelled to this action by the unsatis- 
factory position in which the members of the press stood in relation to 
the House, and stated it to be his intention to pursue a similar course 

every evening until reporters should be made He understood the 

member for Swansea had withdrawn the motion which stood in his name 
on the notice paper for this evening. 

Mr. Disraeli was quite indignant with Mr. Biggar for his con- 
duct. He considered the Honorable Member for Cavan's action unpar- 
donable, tending to lower the dignity of the first assembly of gentle- 
men in the world. Several Irish members condemned Mr. Biggar's 
course. Old members, who had accepted the Home Rule cry to preserve 
their seats or to procure new ones, were most emphatic in their condem- 
nation. A motion was put, and carried, that in future members should 
give notice if they proposed to call the Speaker's attention to strangers, 
which would have to be put to the vote of the House. 

What made Mr. Biggar's action more deeply hurtful to the aristo- 
cratic British tendencies of both sides of the Chamber, was the presence 
of the Prince of Wales, who was compelled to withdraw with the others. 

The Tory Coercion Bill was debated in committee and opposed by 
the Irish members. The Irish Secretary accepted an amendment pro- 
posed by Mr. Butt, limiting the right of search for arms to the period 
between sunrise and sunset, and also providing that the warrant of search 
shall only be exercised in the presence of the person to whom it is 
directed by name. 

Mr. Butt said that the Right Honorable Baronet, in assenting to these 
amendments, had done much to mitigate the evils of this coercive legisla- 
tion, inasmuch as it might now be said with truth, that the general right of 
domiciliary search no longer existed ; for his own part, he could, with 
a clear conscience, return his sincere thanks to the Right Honorable 
gentleman for the concessions he had made. 

Well and truly did that unflinching Nationalist, John Mitchell, write 
of the class from which the Provincialists spring as "genteel dastards 
and bellowing slaves." Hear this Provincialist leader eating dirt in the 
enemy's legislative halls. Heavens, what self-abasement for a man who 
represented a gallant nation — or has Provincialism sapped the manhood 
of a once high-spirited race — thanking the invader of his country for 
a coercion law ! There is nothing more monstrous or degrading in the 
history of any people. What effect had the trumpery change in the 
wording of a coercive edict upon Ireland's happiness, that this man, 
then hailed as Ireland's Provincial leader, should so humiliate his country 
in the legislature of her enemy ? He in no sense represented the feeling 



BRITISH PARLIAMENT THE GRAVE OF IRISH PATRIOTISM. 6l 

of Irish Nationalists, who must continue to wince under these inflictions, 
for their voices are stifled not only by the foe, but by these noisy bellow- 
ing slaves, the Provincialists ! 

Mr. Butt must have known, but that he wanted a victory for the 
agitation like Ireland's present Provincialists, that the acceptance of his 
clause prohibiting a search for arms after sunset was not of the value to 
Ireland of the paper on which he wrote it. 

Whenever it suited the exigencies of the invader's rule, their employees, 
the Royal Irish Constabulary, or the Metropolitan Police, visited the 
house of any man suspected of loyalty to Ireland, well knowing the 
seeming illegality would be condoned by their superiors in authority. 
Irish members in the British Parliament are like men in a maelstrom — 
they are whirled round and round and hear no sound but the rush and 
noise of the waters. They cannot save themselves from being swept 
headlong into a stream that leads to national destruction. Sooner or 
later the vortex that swirls them round will swallow them up, and they are 
lost to Ireland for evermore. 

When an Irishman reflects on the number of promising men sent 
from Ireland to the London legislature, he must feel deeply grieved 
at the thought ; some of them were good men who tried to do Ireland 
true and loyal service before they were sent there, but these national 
aspirations were completely destroyed by contact and association 
with the enemy's legislators, thereby doing a double injury to Ire- 
land — deceiving her people, their countrymen, by false and hollow 
promises, and deceiving the enemy's statesmen into the belief that they 
represent Irish feeling, and that the Irish nation has changed with these 
men's changed opinions and slavish subservience to some British party 
leader. The poisoned atmosphere of the British Commons is certain 
sooner or later to sap their national life ; it commenced in Mr. Butt's 
case by conciliation and gratitude to British statesmen for governing 
them a little milder than of old, until it is hard to find one trace of the 
original, so changed is he by a Parliamentary career. 

Instance The O'Donoghue ; he was a good Irishman when he entered 
the British Commons. His challenge to Sir Robert Peel had a manly- 
ring about it. He had strong revolutionary tendencies, and was at one 
time near joining the Nationalist ranks. 

Again, there is Mr. O'Connor Power, once a faithful Nationalist, a 
truly patriotic man before he entered Westminster as a legislator. The 
ability God gave him filled his heart with vanity, and a seat in the 
British Legislature completed the curse. While Irishmen condemn let 
them recall the cause of this defection, caused by sending these men into 
the enemy's Parliament — an act in itself of degradation and national 
stultification. Had they not been sent to the alien chamber they 
might have continued faithful Nationalists. As The O'Donoghue 
expressed it before his Irish manhood left him, " The British Parliament 
is no place for an Irish gentleman." 



CHAPTER V. 
(1875-76-) 

O'CONNELL CENTENARY — THE POETS OF '48. 

The O'Connell Centenary Celebration — Address of the Amnesty Association — Lord 
Mayor McSwiney — His Political Standing — His Complaint Before the Viceroy — 
Amnesty Banner Hung in Chains — The Procession — Immense Crowds — Scenes 
Around the Platform — Amnesty Men in Procession — Lord O'Hagan — The Monster 
Parade — Silken Thomas — Addresses on the Platform — The Lord Mayor — Mr. Butt 
Speaks — O'Connell and the Oath of Supremacy — History Falsely Written — Amnesty 
Meeting under the Presidency of Mr. Parnell — Condemnation of P. J. Smyth — 
Anecdotes of '48 Poets— D'Arcy Magee — Gavan Duffy — SliabhCuillen — " Dear Land " 
— [udas Barry and the Ballad Singer — The Limerick Resolution — Meeting in Nenagh 
— Mr. Gladstone's Land Act Denounced — Mr. Peter Gill and Land Bill of 1870 — 
Incidents of Disraeli's Coercion Bill — Scene on the Quays of Cork — Disraeli's Refusal 
to Release the Military Prisoners — Catalpa Rescue — The News Reaches Dublin — 
Great Torchlight Procession — Disraeli's Effigy Burned — Obstruction in the House of 
Commons — Opposition of Mr. Butt — Entry of Duke of Marlborough as Lord Lieu- 
tenant, December, 1876. 

The centenary of Daniel O'Connell was approaching and his country- 
men were about to celebrate the one hundredth anniversay of the birth of 
this illustrious Irishman, whose brilliant speeches and giant ability shed 
such a halo over the Irish bar. His struggles to free Ireland by moral 
suasion and the justice of her cause, is a household story of every Irish- 
man, and even foreigners are familiar with the career of Ireland's great 
son. On July 29, 1875, the Amnesty Association issued an address 
to the Irish people. Speaking of the herculean task they undertook 
in getting some of the prisoners released, it continues thus : 

" But there still linger in British Bastilles forty-four of our country- 
men. We therefore deem it right to appeal to you on this occasion, 
believing that the O'Connell Centenary will afford a fitting opportunity 
for uniting that assemblage. In fact, the whole celebration is one grand 
protest against the inconsistent and inhuman treatment of political 
prisoners by our alien and relentless rulers. It would be a sad thing 
indeed if in the glare of civic banqueting and glamour, and of plausible 
oratory, we forget those who dared the horrors of the British dungeon, 
who cast the die and never reckoned the consequences, because they 
loved old Ireland, not wisely — according to the theory of those who made 
profit and pretended patriotism — but too well. While we venerate the 
name of O'Connell, while we look upon him as the precursor of the future 
disenthrallment of Ireland, we must remember that the best and truest of 
Irishmen today wear the felon's chains and are being done to death in 
England's jails." 

A motion in favor of amnesty for the remaining political prisoners, 
made by Mr. Mitchell Henry in the British Parliament, brought Mr. Par- 
nell upon his feet, when he delivered an able and sympathetic speech in 
favor of complete amnesty. 

The Lord Mayor of Dublin for the year 1875 was Mr. Peter Paul 
McSwiney, senior partner in a leading dry goods firm. He was person- 
ally an amiable, pious, and conscientious man, one who would serve his 
kind if possible. He was politically West-British and a rabid anti-physi- 
cal force man. He had been Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1864 and had 

62 



O'CONNELL CENTENARY— THE POETS OF '48. 63 

laid the foundation stone of the O'Connell monument that year. During 
his Mayoralty of that date, at the usual inaugural banquet, addressing the 
English Viceroy in the course of a long speech on Irish grievances, he 
took up the insignia of his office as Chief Magistrate of the city and 
complained of the law that prohibited him from wearing his S. S. collar 
and civic robes as Lord Mayor when entering a Catholic church. 

In so far as the removal of the grievance so complained of by Mr. 
McSwiney, Ireland is free. The Lord Mayors of Dublin can wear their 
state robes and what trapping they choose when visiting their churches. 

The control and management of the O'Connell Centennial celebrations 
in the City of Dublin were vested in Lord Mayor McSwiney, who looked 
upon the memory of the great Irish tribune with a reverence approaching 
worship. He believed, as do many of his countrymen, even to this day, 
that to O'Connell are Irishmen indebted for every (so-called) concession 
England gave in his time. 

The " no drop of blood " doctrine was the cardinal principle of Lord 
Mayor McSwiney 's national creed. This otherwise amiable Irishman 
was horrified at the depravity of his countrymen, when he heard that the 
Amnesty Association was determined to parade with the monster O'Connell 
procession. 

The Amnesty procession, though comparatively few in numbers, was 
composed of stalwart, determined upholders of Irish Nationality ; deputa- 
tions from Manchester, Liverpool, and several English cities had joined 
them. All of these were composed of men who had spent the greater 
portion of their lives in the service of Ireland. They assembled at 
Beresford Place, near the Custom House, with the intention of taking up 
their position at the head of the procession. 

Lord Mayor McSwiney and his committee, with questionable taste, had 
invited the ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord O'Hagan, to deliver the O'Connell 
oration. This incensed Nationalists and Provincialists alike, for Silken 
Thomas, as Lord O'Hagan was called, was a renegade repealer, who for 
rank and wealth had gone over to the British, although a mild 
politician and not an extreme partisan, gifted and eloquent, and 
possessed of that savoir-vivre, which gave him the above sobriquet. A 
loyal Irishman was considered the proper person to be the orator of the 
day and not a renegade. 

A grand high mass was celebrated with full Pontifical ceremonies in 
the Cathedral, and all the West-British Catholic wealth of Dublin and the 
tlite of the country were there, and of course the Lord Mayor and City 
Council. One could not help thinking, looking at the crowd of aristo- 
cratic worshipers, would it not have been well for Irish nationality if 
emancipation did not dawn until the sun of freedom shone upon that 
stricken island ? What has emancipation done for Ireland ? Are her 
people more partriotic, are they wealthier, are they in a more prosperous 
condition than they were in before the Fourth George, to save Britain 
from the bloodshed of an Irish insurrection, affixed his signature to that 
so-called document of emancipation ? It has opened avenues of promo- 
tion to the sons of rich Catholics in the service of Ireland's enemy. In 
the Indian service, the army, the navy, the civil service, but all these young 
men are lost to their country ; they are more confirmed Britons than 
those born in that island. Of what value to the Irish masses steeped in 
poverty, is the promotion or emoluments earned by this small number 
of men in the service of that nation which is daily impoverishing their 
country, and which is expatriating their race from the land of their 
fathers ? They leave to be swallowed up and disappear eventually in 
the vortex of peoples with which they mingle. It has given judges to 
administer the enemy's laws ! Yes, it has blessed Ireland with the notorious 



64 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and infamous Judge Keogh, who sent to the gallows innocent lives. It 
has given Ireland to-day Judge O'Brien, a renegade Home Ruler, or one 
who tried to get elected as such. 

Hierarchy of Ireland, search deep down into your hearts, and is there 
not some answering response that tells you that you are Irishmen as well 
as Bishops of God's Church, when you think of these horrors which 
British rule has entailed upon your people, this ruin and loss of faith and 
personal degradation which is happening daily, aye at this very hour ? 
Britain is seething with the vices of the fallen members of your flocks. 
They, who should be listening to your pious exhortations and those of 
your priests, are steeped in crime. Answer, as you pray for light and 
wisdom to the Most High, can you conscientiously condemn any action 
forced upon the Irish people, and done under Irish constituted authority, 
against this illegal and hellish Government, which is the author of all 
these infamies which happen to your people ? Will He, who caused the 
sun to stand in the heavens, to permit the Israelites to defeat and 
slaughter their enemies ; will the God of Joshua, who commanded the 
shedding of the blood of the enemies of his chosen people, look angry 
on the blessed struggle which Ireland should ordain against her treacher- 
ous and cruel foe ? 

As the years roll on, you waste them in idle protestations against the 
enemy's parties. Now the Tories are the object of this useless con- 
demnation, and anon it may be the Liberals. Remember your flocks are 
slowly leaving you, that your churches are losing their congregations 
yearly. Fifty thousand people are lost to Ireland every cycle the earth 
makes around the sun. Think of this, the population reduced in one 
decade by half a million souls ! Fifty thousand people yearly, and then 
take the loss of the natural increase ! How long can Ireland stand this 
drain ? How long can you continue to have people to attend your 
churches if this is not quickly stopped ? It will probably be said that 
this exodus did not come from emancipation. True, but emancipation 
delayed if it did not stop self-government. Britain offered this huge bribe 
to the Irish people to save her rule in Ireland from destruction. Had 
she not done so, eight millions of people, aided by the Irish Catholic 
soldiery, could have swept aside the driveling doctrines of O'Connell, 
and, ignoring his " not one drop of blood " doctrine, faced like men their 
country's foe. They would not have accepted the emancipation of the 
Catholic Church without receiving with it the emancipation of their 
country. Hence emancipation that came as a boon, like all Britain's 
enforced gifts, has become a curse to Ireland. Well might the Irish 
people repeat the lines of Virgil : "I fear the Greeks even when they 
bring gifts." 

The morning of the O'Connell Centenary was misty ; and as the 
various processions marched through the city to take up the places 
assigned them many anxious looks were turned skyward. But soon the 
mist disappeared and the sun came out to cheer and smile upon this 
Irish fete day. Soon after the service was over in the Cathedral, the 
monster procession started, headed by the Amnesty banner with hanging 
fetters : fitting symbol of Ireland's continued slavery. The air resounded 
with Irish music, as thousands of men marched through the streets of 
Dublin to honor Ireland's great son — he whose voice when living 
could thrill the multitude with the wealth and beauty of his oratory. 

Before the huge parade had reached Capel Street, on its return down 
the Quays, the Amnesty men left the main body, and making a detour 
they reached the platform in O'Connell Street (then Sackville), where 
they ranged themselves with their banner. 

The platform — which was erected where now stands that magnificent 



O'CONNELL CENTENARY— THE POETS OF '48 65 

work of Irish Art, the O'Connell statue, nearly completed by the dead 
sculptor Foley, and finished by his Irish pupil — could only hold 150 
persons, and so particular was the Lord Mayor and his committee to 
have it select, that the greatest possible care was taken to allow no 
tickets into the hands of any of the Nationalists. Great, then, was the 
astonishment of the good Lord Mayor, to find the platform in possession 
of the dreaded patriots with their banner in front and their men in 
columns drawn up around it. 

Lord O'Hagan was well aware of the dissatisfaction which the Irish 
people felt at his being chosen to deliver the oration. The Nationalists 
and the Provincialists were of one opinion on this subject. With the 
good taste and good sense of his character, he absented himself and sent 
an apology, pleading the illness of his daughter as an excuse. 

Lord Mayor McSwiney and several of his friends got on the plat- 
form, and as Peter Paul stepped forward to address the multitude, it 
was the signal for loud hooting. In vain he essayed to speak. His 
voice was drowned in the noise of the angry crowd. In a few minutes 
Mr. Isaac Butt came forward, when the people broke into loud cheers. 
Mr. Butt's address threw oil on the troubled waters and restored good 
humor to the crowd. 

Mr. A. M. Sullivan of the Dublin Nation, member of a very brilliant 
and accomplished family, next addressed the crowd. He made a telling 
and finished speech. Mr. O'Connor Power spoke on behalf of the 
Amnesty men ; his address was received with immense applause. 

Lord O'Hagan, although he did not deliver his speech, took measures 
that the oublic should not lose what he had prepared for the occasion. 
He published a brilliant oration on O'Connell and his times. Speaking of 
the Emancipation year, Lord O'Hagan said : 

" He went to the House of Commons, the representative not of Clare 
only, but of Catholic Ireland ; he repudiated haughtily and in memorable 
words the qualifying oath. Of course he was denied a place in Parlia- 
ment, but the whole world saw that the fight was over. Sir Robert Peel 
and the Duke of Wellington accepted the inevitable, and gave us the 
justice they could no more withhold." 

Such a scholarly man as Lord O'Hagan must have been familiar 
with the facts, but it did not suit his purpose to tell them. He distinctly 
states in the above passage from his speech, what millions of his country- 
men have been taught to believe, that O'Connell's presence in the House 
was for the deliberate purpose of bearding the English Parliament and 
rejecting the oath, which he did in those historic words. The inference 
drawn from Lord O'Hagan's speech, was that emancipation followed 
O'Connell's appearance in the House. This was written by Lord 
O'Hagan with the deliberate object to impress upon the mass of his 
countrymen, who were not familar with its history, the great fact that 
O'Connell by his manly action in the House, in refusing to take the oath, 
thereby convinced Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington of the 
justice of his cause, and their yielding granted emancipation. Amid the 
many fictions with which history teems, this is one of those great false- 
hoods, and there is no more fallacious statement taught our people by 
those who hail O'Connell as the Liberator, than this hugely circulated lie. 

The facts are these : O'Connell was elected member for Clare on 
June 30, 1828. At that time and for years before Ireland was well 
organized to strike a blow at British rule in the country. Of course this 
movement was secret and revolutionary — a continuance of Emmet's 
organization and that of the United Irishmen ; they were preparing to take 
the field on the strength of the Catholic grievances added to the National 
one. The revolutionary doctrines had spread into the British Armv, 



66 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

then largely composed of Irish Catholic soldiers. The religious griev- 
ance more particularly impressed these men, and they were anxious and 
willing for the signal for insurrection to make common cause with their 
countrymen. 

It is scarcely necessary to state that O'Connell knew nothing of this. 
Any rumors that reached his ear he gave no credence to. For if he 
really knew it, no English Minister could be more anxious than he to 
suppress it. 

He believed like most lawyers in arguing the question with the British 
in a legal and a constitutional manner, and convincing them of the evil 
of their actions by the force of logic. Once convinced of this, he thought 
they would of course redress the grievance complained of at once. Py 
educating the English masses to know the error of their ways toward 
Ireland, their liberty-loving spirit is so great that his country would 
receive the fullest satisfaction. Such was the great O'Connell theory 
and such are the principles upon which his successors act to-day. 

Although Mr. O'Connell knew nothing of this secret revolutionary 
movement, the British Ministers did. They were fairly well informed ; 
the spread of the revolutionary doctrines in the army alarmed them, 
they dreaded the prospect of another Irish rebellion — as they would term 
a national war for independence ; particularly as the Irish would be aided 
by Catholic soldiers whose banners would be inscribed with religious 
freedom. 

So they introduced the Emancipation Act in Feburary, 1829. They 
got the king's signature, through his horror of revolution and through that 
fear alone. They themselves publicly expressed this as their motive 
power, as the speeches of Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, as 
quoted by Mr. Gladstone, confirm. It was not the justice of the cause 
which O'Connell advocated that they saw (as Lord O'Hagan expresses, 
in his oration); on the contrary they believed the cause most unjust. 
They fully admitted to their countrymen that they knew that the grant- 
ing of emancipation was a great evil, but then Irish insurrection was a 
greater evil still. Men like the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel 
were not likely to be influenced by sentimental motives. The king 
signed Catholic Emancipation on April 13, 1829. Mr. O'Connell did 
not present himself after his election of the previous year to be sworn 
in. But hearing of the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act, he 
concluded he would be permitted to take the new oath. He presented 
'himself on the floor of the House of Commons on May 15, 1829, to be 
sworn and to take his seat as member for Clare, one month after the 
passing of the Emancipation Act. He asserted his right to take the oath 
prescribed by the newly passed law. He was heard in support of his claim 
at the Bar of the House and then requested to retire. 

Bigotry was still rampant in the British breast ; what they were com- 
pelled to surrender to the fears of insurrection and the dread of physical 
force, they were determined should be given to O'Connell grudgingly. 
As a foe they secretly despised him; the magic of his voice and the power of 
his oratory had no influence with them. He might as well have addressed 
the angry waves and asked them to be still. 

The Solicitor General (Sir Nicholas Tindal) made a motion that as he 
(Mr. O'Connell) had been returned for Clare before the passing of the 
Emacipation Act, he could not sit without taking the former oath, the 
oath of supremacy. This resolution was carried by 190 to 216. On May 
19 Mr. O'Connell was sent for, and the resolution conveyed to him at the 
Bar of the House. He then asked to see the oath of supremacy, which 
the resolution of the House would compel him to take, unless he sought 
re-election for Clare. When he read the oath, he made the historic reply 



O'CONNELL CENTENARY— THE POETS OF '48. 67 

so often quoted by Irishmen, and which is to be found in the archives of 
the British Parliament as follows : 

"Whereupon Mr. O'Connell requested to see the said oath, which 
being shown to him accordingly, Mr. O'Connell stated that the said oath 
contained one proposition which he knew to be false, and another which 
he believed to be untrue, and he therefore refused to take the said oath 
of supremacy." 

A fresh writ was issued for Clare on the 21st and Mr. O'Connell had 
to go through the form of re-election, after which he was of course per- 
mitted to take the new oath and his seat for Clare as prescribed under 
the recent Act. 

To this day are to be seen, in Irish cabins in the country and in the 
parlors of Irishmen in the town, engravings hanging on the walls depict- 
ing O'Connell at the Bar of the House ; and underneath the historic and 
memorable words used at the time. How firmly convinced are a large 
section of the Irish people that the thunder of O'Connell's eloquent voice 
in the English senate hastened Catholic emancipation ! 

The use of those historic words had nothing whatever to do with 
Catholic emancipation, a measure at that time a part of British law. 
Advocate as he was of this (so-called) great boon to emancipate the 
Catholics, and although "the largest souled and most gifted of her sons," 
he has absolutely no claim to the title of Liberator. 

Britain at insurrection's dread sound was forced to yield. 
" Ninety-eight " men dead — their name had won the field. 

Soon after the O'Connell Centennial celebration a meeting of the 
Amnesty Association was held in Dublin, under the presidency of 
Charles Stewart Parnell ; for this young tribune of the people at this 
time and up to 1882 identified himself with the Nationalists, and did not 
finally break with them until the spring of the year 18S7. This meeting 
received evidence which seemed to them conclusive that Mr. P. J. Smyth 
cut the traces of the Amnesty carriage on the day of the great procession. 
A resolution was passed declaring his explanation unsatisfactory and call- 
ing on him to resign or he would be expelled. 

Mr. P. J. Smyth's course in Irish National politics has been a peculiar 
one, and indeed it was the same with some of the orators and poets of the 
'48 era. Catholic emancipation had conferred upon those young gentle- 
men the boon of having a country to sell. Mr. Smyth, after a most erratic 
career and having avoided all entangling alliances with either of the great 
English parties, changed at the end of his life. He left the Irish Provin- 
cialists and after some time accepted a position from Mr. Gladstone. 
This Government appointment he received a short time before he died. 
Irishmen who remember what he was are inclined to think necessity drove 
him to accept it, and it is very probable that the knowledge of this act 
preyed on his mind and hastened his death. He did not live long to en- 
joy the luxuries purchased by British gold. Another of this brilliant 
group was Thomas D'Arcy McGee, the poet and historian who enriched 
the literature of Ireland with the labors of a productive pen, a man of 
great genius ; every line in his works or in his poems breathes the soul 
of a true patriot. What evil genius came upon this gifted man to change 
so completely it is impossible to say, unless it was the opportunities of 
rank and honors which he could receive in the service of the enemy. In 
the days of his patriotism no one was more scathing in the denunciations 
of a traitor, and in one or two poems he expressed the hope that if ever 
he proved false to Ireland that he should receive adequate punishment. 

The sad results all are familiar with; his melancholy and tragic end all 



68 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Irishmen deplore. Among the small group that founded the Nation 
newspaper in 1842, was Charles Gavan Duffy, but, although he was the 
friend and companion of stern and determined patriots, he was not of 
them. It is strange to think that this intimate associate of Thomas Davis 
did not catch one spark of the fire of patriotism that burned within the 
breast of that devoted son of Ireland ; that none of John Mitchell's deter- 
mination of purpose and opposition to everything politically British could 
find a place in his character. Pleasing and graceful as a writer, like many 
Irish Provincialists (for he could be called nothing else), he would have 
been a useful and valuable servant were his country an independent 
nation, but he was constitutionally too weak, far too weak to aid effect- 
ively in giving any practical assistance to bring about such an event. 
He had not the slightest reflex of the great men who were around him in 
that stormy period. He is at this date wearing the honors of British 
Knighthood — a very respectable member of the Imperial subjects of 
Queen Victoria. 

Who that has read the stirring ballads of that charming poet " Sliabh 
Cuillen " would ever think that he could degenerate into a British official? 
But alas for the good that Catholic emancipation did for Ireland, this is 
lamentably true. Subjoined are two verses of one of his poems : 

My grandsire died his home beside, 

They seized and hanged him there, 
His only crime in evil time 

Your hallowed green to wear. 
His brothers twain across the main 

Were sent to pine and rue, 
But still they turned with hearts that burned 

In hopeless love to you, 

Dear land ! • 

In hopeless love to you. 

What path is best her rights to wrest 

Let other heads divine ; 
By work or word, by voice or sword, 

To follow them be mine. 
The breast that zeal and hatred steel 

No terrors can subdue, 
If death should come, that martyrdom, 

Were sweet endured for you, 

Dear land ! 

Were sweet endured for you. 

Sliabh Cuillen, the author of this exquisite national poem and many 
other similar ones, is John O'Hagan, the present Chief Judge in the Irish 
Land Court. He is earning a comfortable income in the service of his 
country's enemy, trying to make the farmers suffer by making the land 
to them truly dear land. 

But another story of a '48 poet is a very peculiar incident of its kind — 
M. J. Barry, one of the writers of that period and the author of several 
fine ballads ; one of these, " The Green Flag," is written to a stirring 
martial air, the lines are : 

Boys, fill your glasses, 

Each hour that passes 
Steals, it may be on our last night's cheer. 

The day soon shall come, boys, 

With fife and drum, boys, 
Breaking shrilly on the soldier's ear. 
Drink the faithful hearts that love us 

In to-morrow's thickest fight, 
While the green flag floats above us ! 
Think, boys, its for them we smite. 



O'CONNELL CENTENARY— THE POETS OF '48. 69 

Then up with the green flag ; 

Down with each mean rag — 
The green flag above us in triumph be seen. 

Think of its glory, 

Long shrined in story ; 
Charge for Erin and her flag of green. 

Mr. M. J. Barry was an early deserter from the National ranks — that 
is the National ranks of making patriotic songs, of which he wrote a 
number of excellent ones. Mr. Barry was called Michael Judas by his 
former friends, but the Irish poet knew that financial glory was more 
easily obtained in the British than in the Irish service, which Catholic 
emancipation had opened up to this enterprising writer. After many 
vicissitudes Michael Judas was appointed police magistrate. During the 
close of the Fenian excitement one Saturday night the police arrested a 
ballad singer for singing seditious ballads. He was imprisoned in the 
police cells and brought up before the sitting magistrate, who happened 
to be Mr. Barry. The policeman made his charge against the prisoner 
for singing seditious ballads, tending to provoke a breach of the peace, etc., 
etc., in the then state of the country. Mr. Barry sentenced the prisoner 
to fourteen days' imprisonment. The seditious ballad which the prisoner 
was sentenced for singing was the " Green Flag," the magistrate s own 
composition. 

At a public meeting, held at this time in Limerick, the following 
resolution was submitted, and only withdrawn at the urgent solicitation 
of Mr. Butt : " That considering the manner in which the demand of the 
Irish people for self-government preferred through their representatives 
has been received by the Imperial Parliament, we now call on our 
representatives aftd their colleagues to make their final demand at the 
next session of Parliament." * 

Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of 1870 was now proven to be a worthless 
measure to the Irish tenant farmers ; but, like most of that statesman's 
Irish measures, of great service to the lawyers. Meetings were held call- 
ing on the British legislature to pass a law of some practical utility to the 
agricultural community. 

A great meeting was held in Nenagh to voice the sentiment of the 
Irish farmers in their just demand for fair rents and fixity of tenure. It 
was held on January 3, 1876. Among the many speeches delivered was 
the following address by the county member, one of the Home Rule 
party. Honorable Mr. O'Callaghan, M. P., said : "The Land Act of 
Mr. Gladstone can be twisted in different ways ; we want a Land Act 
that cannot be quibbled about by lawyers." 

Mr. Peter Gill, a veteran Nationalist and uncle to Mr. J. P. Gill, 
M. P., one of Mr. Parnell's most faithful followers to-day, and a firm 
and sincere believer in Mr. Gladstone's conversion to Irish Nationality, 
denounced the Land Act of 1870, and moved a resolution to the effect 
that this Land Act, instead of protecting the tenant farmers, had proved 
ruinous to them by aiding insatiable landlords to perpetrate legal 
felony by exacting renewal fines, or driving them to the verge of 
pauperism by rack rents. 

This description of one of Mr. Gladstone's concessions, by a man 
who thoroughly understood the situation of the farmers, residing as he 
did in an agricultural district, fully corroborated every Nationalist's 
description of Mr. Gladstone's so-called concessions. All of which 
measures were so ingeniously constructed that, as Mr. Gill expressed in 

* This resolution, it is understood, was drawn up by that gallant, whole-souled Nation- 
alist John Daly, now a prisoner in a British dungeon and an enforced companion of the 
enemy's felons. 



70 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

his resolution, they were, instead of measures of relief, engines of destruc- 
tion to the people of Ireland. And it is for such deadly weapons, leveled 
at their existence as a people under either the pleasing titles of " Tenant 
Relief Bill " or " Home Rule," that Irishmen are asked to throw up their 
hats and shout hossanas to the Grand Old Man. Mr. Gill was a sincere 
believer in "moral suasion " and a consistent Provincialist. 

On the same platform was a patriotic Irish priest, the Rev. Mr. 
Horan of Galway. He said he hated the name of England and her 
accursed laws, and if he could emancipate his countrymen he would, for they 
were not emancipated, notwithstanding- O' Council's effort, as they were sub- 
ject to landlord tyranny. 

On February 7, 1876, the house of a respectable farmer, named Downey, 
was ransacked in his absence, to the terror of his wife, by a party of con- 
stables, and a minute examination made of every scrap of paper with 
writing upon it. On his return home he was informed of the visit. He 
complained to Mr. Hamilton, R. M., who stated that an information had 
been sworn against him by a person who suspected him of having written 
a threatening letter. He was referred by the magistrate for further 
inquiry to the sub-inspector of Constabulary, by the sub-inspector to the 
head constable, and by the head constable to a constable, who laughed at 
his indignation. He could not learn the name of the person who swore 
the unjust information against him. This is an incident of the effect of 
Mr. Disraeli's coercion law. 

Another case of coercion occurred in Cork. A man who rushed 
eagerly to be in time for the steamer Queen, leaving for Queenstown, 
arrived near St. Patrick's Bridge in time to see her steaming down the 
river. He was excited, and in his disappointment shotted : " To H — 11 
with the Queen ! " 

A constable heard him and arrested him for using seditious and 
treasonable language. In vain he explained and expostulated ; he was 
brought before a magistrate, where he stated it was the steamer Queen he 
spoke of. He was sentenced to a term of imprisonment as a warning to 
those disloyal to Ireland's enemy. 

The news of the escape of the Australian Fenian prisoners had 

reached Dublin in June, this year. The Nationalists testified their joy 

• and delight at their escape by organizing a monster torchlight procession. 

The men in Dublin turned out in thousands, and with bands playing 
national music the torchlight procession marched by Dublin Castle, and 
through all the principal streets, followed by an immense crowd. Judging 
.from the enthusiastic and almost impromptu demonstration the National 
spirit still burned bright in the hearts of the citizens of Ireland's metrop- 
olis. They carried an effigy of Mr. Disraeli, filled with combustibles, 
which they burned on Grattan Bridge and then threw into the Liffey, 
while the bands played and the immense gathering sang " God save 
Ireland." It is a strange coincidence that Mr. Disraeli positively refused 
to release these prisoners two days before the news of the gallant Catalpa 
iiescue reached England. 

This year, 1876, the Eastern question occupied English political life. 
Mr. Butt introduced a Land Bill, which was rejected by a majority of 
234. Obstruction in the House by Mr. Biggar and Mr. Parnell was in 
an embryo state, ready to come out with full vigor in the next session 
of Parliament. Mr. Parnell and Mr. O'Connor Power visited America 
this year ; during the visit Mr. Parnell met several Irish Nationalists. 

The close of the year brought a change in the Tory Viceroys. The 
Duke of Abercorn resigned and was succeeded by the late Duke of 
Marlborough, who made his triumphal entry as England's representative 
to govern Ireland, at the behests of Mr. Disraeli, in December, 1876. 




GENERAL MICHAEL KERW1N. 
In his uniform as colonel of the 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry. 



CHAPTER VI. 

(1865.) 

A RETROSPECT — THE PARTY OF ACTION — THE MILITARY COUNCIL'S PLAN 
OF INSURRECTION, 1865 — HISTORY OF JAMES STEPHENS* ESCAPE. 

Colonel Thomas J. Kelly's Mission to Ireland — Preparations to Take the Field — Musketry- 
Schools — Drill Classes — School of Military Engineers — Army Signal Corps — 
The Military Council — General Millen — John Nolan — Ribbonmen and Fenians 
— Colonel Kelly's Military Career — Battle of Cunifex Ferry — Kelly Severely 
Wounded — Chief of Signal Corps — General D. F. Burke — The Irish Brigade — 
Charge up Marye's Heights — Burke's Gallant Action — Promoted General for Bravery 
— General Wm. Halpin — General Michael Kerwin — His War Career — Joins Twenty- 
fourth Infantry — Enters Confederate Camp as a Spy — His Dangerous Mission — 
Fight at Middleton — Kerwin's Tactics — Advance of Lee's Army — Retreat on Win- 
chester — General Milroy Surrounded — Civil Administrator — Mustered Out — Leaves 
for Ireland — The Military Council's Plan of Insurrection — To Seize 30,000 Stand 
of Arms — Insurrection in the Military Barracks — Plan Rejected by the C. O. I. R. — 
Arrest of Stephens — His Defiant Speech in Court — Captain John Kirwan's Career — 
John Kirvvan and Daniel Byrne at the Battle of Castlefidardo — I. R. B. Secret 
Police — Daniel Byrne Promises to Release Stephens — Colonel Kelly meets Byrne — 
Duplicate Keys — Breslin and Underwood O'Connell — Stephens' Dispatches from 
Prison — Millen Sent to America — Journal De St. Petersbourg on Ireland — Colonel 
Kelly Plans the Rescue — The Six Rendezvous — The Paper Signals — Scenes Inside 
the Prison — The Ladder and Tables — Scenes Outside the Prison — Policeman in 
Love Lane — Kelly and the Locksmith — The Twelve Guards — Fearful Storm — Two 
O'Clock — Suspense — Three O'Clock — "Will He Never Come?" — The Shower of 
Gravel — The Rope — Stephens Rescued — Kelly Places Him in Safety — Excitement in 
Dublin — British Consternation — Arrest of Daniel Byrne — The Freeman on the 
Escape — Ballad on the Rescue — Miss Sarah Jane Butler — Nicholas Walsh — Miss 
Cecilia Walsh — Stephens Brought to Mrs. Butler's — Waiting the Signal for Insurrec- 
tion — Anxiety of the Country — Stephens Calls a Council — Postpones the Fight — 
Cowardice and Disaster — Stephens, Kelly, and the Detective — Miss Butler and the 
Military Patrol — Kelly Gets Stephens Out of Dublin — Stephens Reaches Paris — 
Break Up of the Organization in Ireland — A Remnant of Gallant Men Hold 
Together. 

When the news of the Australian rescue reached Ireland there was 
great joy all over the land. It was not so much the rescue of the 
prisoners, as the knowledge that the National movement was alive and 
active, and that their exiled brothers in America were still animated with 
the patriotism of years gone by ; clinging yet to the true National faith, 
those pure doctrines of Wolfe Tone, of Lord Edward, of Davis, of 
Mitchell, and the numerous other patriots and martyrs that struggled, 
suffered, and died for Ireland, trying to teach their people that by com- 
bating the enemy and by no other means could the dawn of independence 
come to their beloved country. 

This history will give a slight sketch of this epoch in Ireland's varied 
struggles to cast off the invader, the memorable years 1865 to 1867 — a 
movement which was born with high hopes and culminated in failure, 
but not in disaster. The propaganda which the great Fenian and 
I. R. B. organizations preached still lives on, and is to-day taking posses- 
sion of the Irish heart and fast removing from the people that bastard 
Provincialist doctrine which has brought degradation, surrender, sorrow, 
and disaster. Although many died in prison and others were sent to 
premature graves by the anxieties, sufferings, and deprivation of their 

71 



72 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

means of livelihood, the lessons taught the people by their lives and by 
their deaths still animates the Irish heart to a further and more successful 
endeavor. Of these losses but few, very few, were shot in skirmish with 
the enemy. Of those best remembered are O'Donoghue at Tallaght and 
Peter O'Neil Crowley at Kilcloney Wood. Four suffered death upon 
the enemy's scaffold — Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien at Manchester, and 
Michael Barrett in London. Ireland, while she deplores their loss, feels 
that their conduct cannot fail to exercise a most salutary effect on those 
who are left to sustain the contest and gain the palm of victory. 

Before the British Government became conscious of the powerful 
organization that was rapidly growing in Ireland, the leaders at home 
and in America were fast coming to the conclusion that the time for 
action had arrived. The Irish People newspaper was propagating healthy 
national teaching over the land and the men in the gap were straining 
their eyes toward the Great Republic of the west, and anxiously waiting 
for the signal to take the field. 

In the spring of 1865 the Fenian leaders in the United States decided 
on sending an emissary to Ireland to examine into the condition of the 
I. R. B. organization, and to see for himself the preparedness of the 
men in the gap to take the field against the British invader. 

They selected at Washington, D. C, for this important mission, Colonel 
Thomas J. Kelly, a man of brains and undoubted ability, and one of the 
number of capable men of superior capacity who left for Ireland during 
that important epoch. His instructions were to get from James Stephens, 
C. O. I. R., to whom he carried credentials, an order to visit the National 
circles all over Ireland and to learn for himself, untrammeled by the 
Irish Republican officials on the ground, the actual condition of affairs in 
that country. Seldom in the checkered history of Ireland, if ever in 
recent times, was Irish manhood better organized to take the field than 
during that year of 1865. Irish hopes, determination, and patriotic self- 
sacrifice animated the breasts of the people in the old land and the exiles 
in the new. That cup of joy to every Irish Nationalist, the near approach 
of meeting their enemy, the British invader, on the battlefields of Ireland, 
was dashed from their lips by the utter incompetence, weakness, vacilla- 
tion, and bombastic rule of a self-created autocrat, a man of great ability 
as an organizer, but no more intended by nature to guide a revolution or 
to conduct the affairs of a nation in the crisis of a struggle for independ- 
ence than he was destined to supersede a Von Moltke or a Sheridan in 
the command of armies. This " Old man of the Sea," filled with over- 
whelming vanity and egotism, clung round the neck of the National struggle 
until he strangled its energies in the hour when the blow for freedom 
should have been dealt to the foe. 

Colonel Kelly's tour through Ireland was satisfactory. The condition 
of the 1. R. B. was far beyond his expectations, and looking back at the 
then condition of the organization, it is only natural that he would be 
pleased and feel thoroughly satisfied with what he saw. Cork alone 
could have turned out a splendid body of well-drilled, magnificent soldiers 
— an army that might be expected to cope successfully with any force 
the enemy could bring against it, both for physique and intelligence. 
They lacked superior military skill in commanders, but these were soon 
after supplied them. The deficiency in arms was the great serious draw- 
back, and had Stephens not depended so much on the landing of American 
arms this condition of things would not have been so lamentably behind ; 
every man could have supplied himself with a rifle. Britain was completely 
hoodwinked as to the deep hold the movement had taken in the country. 
Nagle's information she did not place much reliance upon, and very 
naturally could not believe any insurrection serious that placed such a 



A RETROSPECT. 73 

person in confidential communication with its chief. The men were 
armed through gun clubs, which supplied them with rifle and bayonet on 
the payment of small weekly sums, but Stephens did not permit the 
forming of these until it was almost too late to repair the previous 
inaction. 

Colonel Kelly, on his return to America, gave a favorable report of 
what came under his observation, which pleased the patriotic men here, 
and as men speak now of Home Rule, they then believed an Irish Repub- 
lic was soon to be born in the smoke and carnage of the battlefield. 
Military glory had seized possession of the Irishman of that period ; for 
them hope sat smiling on the hill, where to-day lies in the valley sad 
memory. 

The close of the war set free a number of Irish-American soldiers, and 
numbers of these men volunteered for service in the old land. Colonel 
Thomas J. Kelly returned to Dublin and became James Stephens' princi- 
pal officer and secretary. A great number of the men sent over to Ireland 
were brave but unskillful soldiers. But besides these were men who 
held high commands and fulfilled important functions in the American 
struggle. 

All over Ireland musketry schools were established and the manu- 
facture of cartridges was taught. As soon as the daily toil was over pre- 
paration for the coming fight was the young men's recreation. Drill 
classes, which have been in existence for years, increased in numbers and 
efficiency. 

Young men of education were selected to join the school of engineer- 
ing, and a number of fairly well-trained engineer officers, suitable for 
subaltern commands, were the outcome of this special branch of military 
study. The men worked hard, for their whole soul was in their task. 

For the superior commands there were on the ground some men who 
had gained their experience in the field, and fresh arrivals increased the 
number of these valuable officers. 

Colonel Kelly established a school to teach army signaling as prac- 
ticed in the Union armies, and as this was unknown at that period in the 
British army, the Irish revolutionary soldier would have had this advan- 
tage over his adversary. 

One of the arrivals in Ireland was an Irishman who had seen service 
in Mexico — General Millen. His presence was noised abroad among the 
men and marvelous and fabulous were the exploits attributed to this 
extraordinary man. It will be remembered that at that time General 
Millen was Ireland's only general, and although they received accessions 
of hard fighters a little later on, they were all of inferior rank to the 
Irish Mexican who held the title of full general. 

Of General Millen's military record nothing authentic is known ; his 
brother officers on the military council in Dublin, with all of whom the 
writer had some acquaintance, were unable to throw any light upon his 
career ; but all were duly impressed at that time with his valor and skill. 
Had he proved as successful in the field of Mars as he had been in the 
groves of Venus, he must indeed have turned out a veritable fire eater. 
General Millen won a bride, if he did not win military laurels during his 
Irish campaign. 

Had the control and authority of the intended revolution been sur- 
rendered over to the skillful military minds that now arrived on the scene, 
instead of being centred in the hands of such a vain, egotistical, and weak 
man as James Stephens undoubtedly proved, the British would have had 
a hard nut to crack before they could, as they termed it, " scotch " the 
Irish National movement. Mr. Stephens was undoubtedly a great organ- 
izer, and was as honest in intentions as he proved vacillating, braggart, 



74 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and impotent in practice. Those who recklessly accuse him of being 
intentionally false to Ireland do him great injustice. No man who knew 
him well charges him with any lack of patriotism. The man was sim- 
ply incapable, and that with which nature had not endowed him he tried to 
assume by an air of mystery and braggadocio. When spoken to by one 
of the newly arrived Irish-American officers about the arms in possession 
of the men, he told this soldier, fresh from the practical experience of 
American battlefields, that he had a great number of pikes, and that 
Michael Moore and others were turning out more of these weapons 
daily ; the military man turning on his heel told him in a contemptuous 
tone he would as soon command men armed with broomsticks. On 
another occasion he sent a man to one of the officers of the council ask- 
ing him to draw up a plan of an army in line of battle with the officers 
in position. He wanted this, it is supposed, to impress upon the men the 
melodramatic importance of himself as commander-in-chief. These 
silly acts of the C. O. I. R. were unknown outside of a few men. The 
masses of the people believed in him, as they do in another great man 
to-day, and his name was a magic talisman to conjure by. Hundreds of 
thousands of Irishmen were ready to dare anything at his command. 
He knew this well and it fed his vanity, tending to destroy any judgment 
he possessed. The men in America were told the most exaggerated 
stories of the position in Ireland and the amount of arms they possessed, 
while the men at home were all but convinced that an Irish- American 
expedition of at least five thousand men, armed with Spencer repeating 
rifles and accompanied by artillery, would be landed upon the Irish shores. 
The story was undoubtedly believed by many intelligent men and arrange- 
ments for their reception were actually carried out. The writer remem- 
bers one evening meeting the man who had sent over to America pilots 
to guide the ships having these Irish-American troops on board, and the 
manner in which he imparted this important information so impressed all 
that it was really believed such an expedition was being actually prepared 
in America. Few of the men at home were really aware of the actual state 
of things in America; to the enemy's press, which in many cases told truths, 
they naturally gave no credence. They were all prepared to do or die 
for the old land, and considered that all their countrymen everywhere 
were animated with the same noble sentiments. And so the great masses 
in the United States were ; they gave their money and their time, and all 
must feel sure that they would have given their hearts' blood for Irish 
freedom as readily as any of the men in the gap. No Nationalist ever 
accused the leaders in America with any lack of sincerity toward Ireland ; 
many of them were really able men, unfamiliar with the position at home, 
but most of those in superior authority were dreamers and utterly unfitted 
for their positions. The republican simplicity and earnestness that 
should have been displayed at this crisis was altogether wanting ; to 
speak of the Moffat Mansion and its uniformed guard, its magnificence 
and the paraphernalia of mock government, with its President and 
Senate, must have disgusted every serious American friend of Irish 
liberty. 

The men at home, while smiling at this extravagance, were more and 
more convinced that the resources of the Irish-American organization were 
almost unbounded. The fabulous stories always circulated of American 
wealth aided this delusion, and that the American movement owned a 
fleet of ships, and had crews and soldiers in their employ with the secret 
connivance of the United States Government, then believed to be hostile 
to Britain, was never for a moment doubted by the best of the men at home. 
A prominent member of the military school of engineers, who afterward 
joined the signal corps, left Dublin, throwing up a first-class position, and 



A RETROSPECT. 75 

journeyed some distance to take command of men that were actually 
under orders to signal the arrival of this visionary fleet. 

But scattering away into dreamland this cloud of falsehood and 
rhodomontade which some men cast around the movement, the actual 
position in Ireland was excellent ; never since before '98 was the nation 
in a healthier condition to meet her foe. The Irish militia, which num- 
bered about thirty thousand men, and who had the advantage of some 
military training which they improved upon by secret drilling, were at 
least three-fourths enrolled in the I. R. B. ranks ; religion made no differ- 
ence. There was a larger percentage of non-Catholics in the movement 
than in any previous National undertaking ; the bone and sinew of the 
towns and cities were all enrolled ; mechanics, laborers, and shopmen, 
the flower of the agricultural districts, and, taken en masse, the manhood 
and intelligence of Ireland were ready to make any sacrifice to establish 
an independent republic. The organization in the British army was 
invaluable. The Irish-American officers could not be made to believe 
that this branch was so powerful and loyal to Ireland. Under the cir- 
cumstances of their training and military life in America this was perhaps 
only natural, but many of them since have confessed, with regret, that 
they did not fully appreciate what an important feature of the home 
movement was this military arm. The weapons in the invader's arsenals, 
by the aid and assistance of these soldiers, were at Ireland's disposal. 
A daring commander with full authority would have been in possession of 
the arsenals a few hours after issuing the orders. Ireland had many 
such daring soldiers at the time and on the scene, skillful generals of 
tried valor and experience, men who in many a battle proved their 
capability and courage, but they were crippled by the authority of 
Stephens and his cowardly delays, waiting for a visionary army from 
America. Had Ireland taken the field at that time, she could have easily 
raised in the country an army of over one hundred thousand men to 
begin the fight. Once the standard of green was unfurled to the breeze, 
men in thousands would have flocked to the national banner, and under 
the Irish flag there would have been found ranged a body of men second 
in bravery to no nation on the earth to-day. 

The disaffection in their army would necessarily paralyze the invaders 
for a time, and this would have given Ireland the needed short interval 
to organize in Dublin and elsewhere. This she could have done quickly 
with the material at her command. The farmers could have easily sup- 
plied the National government, either voluntarily or by requisition, with 
the nucleus of an irregular cavalry. These, aided by the number of dis- 
affected Irish dragoons anxious for the signal to leave the enemy's ranks 
— many of them veterans — would have raised this branch of the service 
to its needed proportion. By a bold and sudden stroke most of the 
invader's artillery could have been seized by the Irish government and, 
unlike heroic '98, the Irish republic could muster thousands of artillerists 
as well as engineers to serve the nation. 

The infection of an Irish uprising would have carried away every 
section ; all the people, agitators and revolutionists alike, would have 
flocked to the National flag, for hatred to British rule is shared by all. 
It is the policy of despair preached by selfish politicians and cowards 
that make any of the Irish mistake Provincialism for Nationality. An 
insignificant handful of rebel Orangemen in Ulster might have been 
wicked enough to try and aid the foreign ravager against their own 
people, but these matricides would be swept aside in a torrent of indigna- 
tion by their own co-religionists, for there is no sectarianism in patriots ; 
both Presbyterians and Episcopalians were at that time, as they are to-day, 
prominent leaders in the secret National ranks. 



-]6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The enemy might bombard and burn the fringe of the island, but he 
could not march far into the bowels of the land without impediment. 

The wealth, valor, and influence of the Irish people in this great con- 
tinent would at once be a unit in Ireland's favor. The bombardment of 
Irish towns not fortified, if resorted to in vandalism by the enemy, would 
stimulate Irish-Americans with redoubled energy. America, and soon 
France and Russia, would grant Ireland the rights of belligerents. 
Privateers would grow upon the ocean, tempted by the rich prizes in 
British argosies. Irish Alabamas would sweep down and prey upon those 
superabundant ocean luxuries — British merchantmen. 

Would Ireland be left alone in this gallant fight ? Would the nation 
that drenched American battlefields with their blood be forgotten here ? 
Would the gallant neighboring land of France remember the ancient race 
that gave them Fontenoy to blazon on their banners ? As the Irish Brigade 
saved Cremona, would they not sustain Ireland's heroic resistance ? 
Would the Northern Russian Colossus not avail himself of the advan- 
tages offered him by the entanglement of his enemy ? But suppose these 
speculations were all vain, and that Ireland was left alone to fight against 
generations of oppression! Her people were all animated with one feeling 
to endeavor to emulate their valiant sires ; each man felt the honor of the 
struggle and hopes of victory rested upon his shoulders. Once in the field 
all differences would have ceased ; each soldier would face death without 
fear of defeat or surrender. Had Ireland unfolded the National tri-color 
that September, 1865, as proposed by a valiant soldier, she would have had 
a glorious chance for independence. There were more provisions in the 
country than could be consumed within twelve months. This food in the 
interior of the country — or driven there — the enemy could not deprive 
them of while an Irish army held the field. Stores of ammunition could be 
had by the seizure of the enemy's arsenals ; the keys to the great magazine 
in the Phoenix Park were in the patriots' possession; its guard for the most 
part was I. R. B. men in the British ranks. With all his investing fleet the 
enemy could not have shut off Ireland's communications. She has hardy 
fishermen on the coast, full of Irish ingenuity and shrewdness, who would 
have carried through the enemy's lines messages to the outer world. 
They would have found secret friends manning the enemy's fleet. Take 
the converse picture and say they would be crushed, as many a cringing 
coward might say — they who term such noble efforts madness. Even 
were it so is it probable that Irishmen with arms in their hands would be 
defeated without a terrific struggle ? There is no such record in the 
history of the race ; the half-armed insurgents of '98 dashed them- 
selves on the enemy's lines sometimes to victory but always with valor. 
Would the men fresh from the daring fights and gallant charges of 
American battles wipe out their record by turning poltroons ? No ! 
their greatest enemy, even the British, would not prophesy such a conclu- 
sion ; no man would dare forecast such a result for Irish insurgent soldiers. 
But suppose they were defeated, as their brave fathers were in '98, look 
at the glorious page they would have written in Ireland's history, brighter 
far than the ignominious failure which occurred through the weakness 
and inability of James Stephens. Suppose the war for independence had 
been crushed in blood, would Ireland have lost the hundreds of thousands 
of lives in the carnage that she is losing yearly by this silly course called 
constitutional agitation ? With or without agitation this drain goes on, 
which is practically for Ireland the same as if the foe had massacred that 
number. There is'food for reflection to national Irishmen, when they think 
of the possibilities of 1865, and which with united and honest exertion 
could be repeated still, if healthy National teaching takes the place of the 
present slavish doctrines. James Stephens was compelled by the Ameri- 



A RETROSPECT. 77 

can organization to create a military and executive council. This he did, 
but he was careful to preserve all real power in his own person. The 
men selected were from among the best of the American military men 
sent to Ireland, and one man represented the home organization, a non- 
military man, but one who would have won distinguished honors had 
Ireland taken the field, as the military council advised. 

This executive and military council consisted of General Michael 
Kerwin, John Nolan, Colonel Thomas J. Kelly, General Denis F. Burke, 
General William Halpin, Captain James Murphy, and for a few weeks 
the Irish Mexican general was attached, who for some days after Stephens' 
arrest, owing to his superior rank, acted as president. 

John Nolan was one of the finest and noblest specimens of manhood. 
He stood over six feet in height, and was built in proportion, strong but 
not massive. He had all the sinewy grace of ease and motion which 
were supposed to be in its full perfection in the Roman gladiator, yet 
winning, courteous, and withal dignified, and as manly and simple as a 
mountain peasant. His face always reminded his friends of the features 
of St. John the evangelist as the beloved disciple is depicted by most 
artists. He had the safme heavenly thoughtful eyes that seemed to look 
into your soul with kindness, and the same wealth of golden brown hair 
and full flowing beard of golden hue. 

John Nolan at this time was about twenty-eight years old ; he was 
organizer of the I. R. B. in the north of Ireland, and was the medium of 
bringing some hitherto strangely antagonistic classes of Irishmen into 
the national fold. His great trouble was with the Northern Ribbon 
societies, who were originally organized to resist landlord oppression and 
Orange aggression. In trying to get those into the National ranks he was 
aided by a celebrated Irish patriot, Mr. Edmond O'Donovan. By great 
difficulty they succeeded in overcoming these men's sectarian ideas. The 
negotiations were for a long time prolonged, and many humorous and 
interesting stories both gentlemen narrated of their experiences. It was 
very difficult to get these Ribbonmen rid of the idea that the landlord 
and the Orangeman were Ireland's only enemies. British rule was for a 
long time a very vague foe to combat them with, but eventually John 
Nolan won them over, and no more faithful Irishmen went inside the 
National organization. All the teachings of that period have been since 
undone. The Provincialist has once again split up the common enemy 
Britain into factions, one called Liberals, the other Tories, both pursuing 
the self-same career when in power, and they have taught the Irish 
people once more to look upon these creatures of British rule, the land- 
lord, policemen, and Orangemen, as Ireland's national enemies, forgetting 
that if once rid of the foreigner and that if Ireland governed herself, these 
local enemies must of necessity disappear. The laws Ireland would make 
to regulate the soil of her country would destroy all the evils and exist- 
ence of landlordism, and if the Orangemen did not begin to recollect 
that like the rest of the people they too were Irish, and accept the 
glorious heritage of freemen won for them by their patriotic brothers in 
spite of their narrow bigotry, then if not satisfied to belong to an inde- 
pendent nation, like the American Tories of Revolutionary days they 
could emigrate. John Nolan, as stated, was the only layman on the 
council ; his knowledge of the organization throughout the country made 
him invaluable to his colleagues. He came to America when the events 
of this Irish epoch closed ; he died in St. Louis, Mo. He is not to be 
confounded with another gentleman of the same name, John Nolan of 
amnesty fame, who recently died in New York, who was also a good and 
patriotic Irishman. 

Colonel Thomas J. Kelly, already mentioned, was born in Galway and 



78 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

came to America about 185 1 ; he settled in New York, and with the 
military instincts of his race joined a regiment of the National Guard. 
After some years he removed to Nashville, Term., where he prospered in 
business and made a host of friends. He was a member of several socie- 
ties and knew the leading merchants and business people of the city, a 
friendship which was of value at a subsequent date. 

When the rumors of secession became thick in the air, Colonel Kelly 
was a strong Unionist, lost a number of his friends, and when the secession 
was accomplished he found himself in a dangerous predicament, for with 
the reckless daring of an Irishman he flew the Union flag from the roof 
of his house, in the presence of an angry crowd. He had a narrow escape 
for his life, and tried to get to New York to join the army, but changed 
his intention ; en route he enrolled in the 10th Ohio Volunteers. He took 
part in the campaign of the Army of the Cumberland under General 
Rosecrans. He was dangerously wounded by a musket shot in the 
mouth, at the battle of Canifex Ferry, where he was promoted on the 
field for valor, but so serious was he hurt that his comrades did not 
believe he could survive many days. After what seemed a miraculous 
cure he returned to the front and rejoined his regiment. 

At this time there was a demand for intelligent officers to join the 
signal corps, and Lieutenant Kelly's name was sent to headquarters. 
He was selected and commissioned captain. In this important service 
he was attached to the army under General Thomas ; he had for aide 
Captain, afterward Colonel, Taylor. 

When the Union Army entered Nashville, Tenn., Captain Kelly 
found himself once again in the city that he had made his home for so 
many years. But the majority of the people were Southern in sympathy 
so he found few friends. Riding out one day he was accosted by an old 
acquaintance, a Unionist, but one who kept his sympathies secret. He 
appointed to meet Kelly that afternoon, as he had something of great 
importance to communicate. Captain Kelly learned from his Nashville 
friend that there was a concentrated effort in progress to attack the 
Union Army from Shiloh. The Confederate troops were to concentrate 
at the junction of the Mobile and Ohio railroads, and at the junction of 
the Memphis and Chalmers line, and thus surround the Union Army, fall- 
ing with superior forces upon them and so destroy if possible the Northern 
troops. This was to be followed by concentrated action in Tennessee ; 
the residents were to tear up the railroads behind General Thomas' army 
corps. Captain Kelly knew this Nashville merchant well ; he had pro- 
cured this information from among the Southern friends he mingled with, 
and who no doubt looked upon him as a Southern sympathizer. 

Captain Kelly rode at once to headquarters and reported what he 
heard to General Thomas. The general was at first disinclined to place 
much credence in the Nashville gentleman's story, but taking down a 
map and studying it, he saw the importance of the position the Southern- 
ers meant to assail. 

General Thomas placed Captain Kelly on his personal staff. He 
was unaware until this time that Kelly was an old resident of the city 
they then occupied. 

Colonel Kelly was at this time a man about thirty years, with a 
stout well-knit frame ; he had a closely cut black beard and a shrewd, 
piercing eye. He was a thorough revolutionist — one of the most valuable 
of the officers who came to Ireland in 1865. 

General D. F. Burke, late colonel of the 88th N. Y. Vols. Irish 
Brigade, that famous Irish-American corps that shed such luster on 
Irish arms in the service of their adopted country, won his spurs 
by personal valor and gallantry displayed on many a hard-fought 



A RETROSPECT. 79 

field. At the beginning of the war he accompanied his regiment, the 
famous 69th National Guard, and shared in the first battle of the war — 
the first fight at Bull Run. On the formation of the Irish Brigade 
he joined the 88th N. Y. Vols., taking part in every engagement until 
the final surrender of General Lee at Appomattox. He brought back 
the remnant of the gallant brigade as colonel of the 88th. General 
Burke's memoirs are so interwoven with the history of the brigade, which 
contributed a large number of officers to the I. R. B. ranks in 1865, that 
we are tempted to quote what distinguished writers have published of this 
gallant representative Irish corps. 

The Comte de Paris, in describing the battle of Gaines' Mill, fought 
on June 27 and 28, 1862, thus alludes to the brigade's participation in 
that fight. 

" The retreat of the Federals, which was hastened by the declivity 
which they were descending into the ravine, is, on the contrary, slackened 
when they climb the other side. The battle has suddenly ceased, an 
effort is made to ascertain the condition of things ; they halt ; twenty-two 
pieces of cannon have fallen into the hands of the enemy ; but there 
yet remains forty or fifty. Most of these are again placed in battery, 
and open from a distance upon the lines of the assailants a fire which 
restores courage to the Union soldiers. The latter listen once more 
to the voices of their chiefs, Porter, Morrell, Slocum, Meade, and Butter- 
field, and see increasing the groups gathering around them at random 
from every regiment. On the right the Federals have lost less ground 
and preserve better order in retreat. At this instant French and Meagher 
arrive upon the ground with two brigades sent by Sumner. The second 
is composed exclusively of Irishmen, the green flag, ornamented with a 
golden harp, floating in their midst. They arrive, shouting vociferously 
and displaying all that vivacity and dash for which the children of this 
ancient warlike race are noted when marching to battle. Their comrades, 
on finding themselves thus supported, respond with loud hurrahs, by 
which they seek to gain fresh courage. In the meantime the enemy has 
re-formed his ranks, and is again in motion ; but instead of a routed 
crowd he beholds a body of resolute troops, who seem to be calmly wait- 
ing for him on the slopes situated on the other side of the ravine. At 
this sight he hesitates, and approaching night puts an end to the san- 
guinary struggle." 

The historian here pays the Irish Brigade the high compliment that 
their presence on the field changed the fortunes of the day. The same 
distinguished writer speaks thus of the brigade at Antietam. 

" Further on, along the Federal left, the Irish brigade resisted all the 
assaults of the Confederates with uncommon energy ; its commander, 
General Meagher, was wounded. He was replaced by Colonel Burke, 
who led his countrymen with equal intrepidity and coolness." 

An English line officer, supposed to have been in the Confederate 
service, gives the following graphic description of the heroic charge of 
the Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg : 

"The defenders were concealed behind a stone wall. So determined 
was the advance that Colonel Miller, commanding the Confederate 
Brigade confronting them — for General Cobb had already fallen — 
ordered his men to hold their fire for a space. And now occurred a 
strange and pathetic incident. Though high was the courage of that 
thin line which charged so boldly across the shot-swept plain, opposed 
to it were men as fearless and as stanch ; behind that rude stone breast- 
work were those men who were 'bone of their bone and flesh of their 
flesh.' The majority of the soldiers in Cobb's Brigade were Irish like 
themselves. On the morning of the battle, General Meagher had bade 



80 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

his men deck their caps with sprigs of green, 'to remind them,' he said, 
' of the land of their birth.' The symbol was recognized by their 
countrymen and ' O God, what a pity ! here comes Meagher's fellows,' 
was the cry in the Confederate ranks. One hundred and fifty paces 
from the hill the brigade halted and fired a volley, while the round shot 
tore fiercely through their ordered line. Still no sign from the wall, 
looming grim and silent through the battle smoke ; and again the bat- 
talion moved swiftly forward. They were but a hundred yards from 
their goal, unbroken and unfaltering. . . Victory seemed within their 
grasp, and a shout went up from the shattered ranks. Suddenly a sheet 
of flame leaped from the parapet, and twelve thousand rifles plied by 
cool, unshaken men, concentrated a murderous fire upon the advancing 
line. To their honor be it told, though scores were swept away, falling 
in their ranks like corn before the sickle, the ever thinning ranks dashed 
on. . . But before that threatening onset, the Confederate veterans never 
quailed ; volley on volley sped with deadly precision, and at so short a 
range, every bullet found its mark. For a while the stormers struggled 
on desperate and defiant ; but no mortal man could long face that terri- 
ble fire, scathing and irresistible as the lightning; and at length the 
broken files gave ground, slowly and sullenly they fell back ; fell back 
to fight no more that day, for beneath the smoke cloud that rolled about 
Marye's Heights, the Irish Brigade had ceased to exist. Forty yards 
from the wall where the charge was stayed, the dead and dying lay piled 
in heaps, and one body, supposed to be that of an officer, was found within 
fifteen yards of the parapet." 

The body found so near the Confederate works was that of Adjutant 
R. Youngs, belonging to General Burke's regiment, the 88th N. Y. Vols. 

The correspondent of the London Times, a journal that no stretch of 
imagination could accuse of partiality for Irishmen, thus describes this 
famous charge as he witnessed it from the Confederate works : 

" To the Irish division commanded by General Meagher was principally 
committed the desperate task of bursting out of the town of Fredericks- 
burg and forming under the withering fire of the Confederate batteries, 
to attack Marye's Heights, towering immediately in their front. Never 
at Fontenoy, Albuero, or at Waterloo, was more undaunted courage dis- 
played by the sons of Erin than during those six frantic dashes which 
they directed against the almost impregnable position of the foe. . . After 
witnessing the gallantry and devotion exhibited by these troops and 
viewing the hillsides for acres strewn with their corpses thick as autumnal 
leaves, the spectator can remember nothing but their desperate courage 
and regret that it was not exhibited in a holier cause. That any mortal 
men could have carried the position before which they were wantonly 
sacrificed, defended as it was, it seems to me idle for a moment to believe. 
But the bodies which lie in dense masses within forty yards of the 
muzzles of Colonel Walton's guns are the best evidence what manner of 
men they were, who pressed on to death with the dauntlessness of a race 
which has gained glory on a thousand battlefields and never more richly 
deserved it than at the foot of Marye's Heights on the 13th day of 
December, 1862." 

And to point out the manner of men who came to Ireland to com- 
mand her insurgent army, these passages from American history are 
quoted. Hundreds of these gallant fellows, not only from the Brigade, 
but other regiments, came to Ireland to fight ; they either left in disgust 
at Stephens' indecision, or were incarcerated in Mountjoy under the sus- 
pension of the Habeas Corpus Act. So that when British writers and 
weak Irish ones, who through timidity or other motives aid the enemy, 
sneer at the 1865 movement, they know not what they talk about ; these 



A RETROSPECT. 81 

brave soldiers, fresh from the war, had they full control, as they should, 
the sneering might be possibly the other way. Among the pile of dead 
and dying close up to the Confederate works on Marye's Heights was Cap- 
tain Burke. He was severely wounded, but with many a gallant comrade 
survived that desperate charge ; his good Irish constitution pulled him 
through and this gallant soldier was able to rejoin his regiment to take 
part in the battle of Chancellorsville, and the celebrated battle of Gettys- 
burg, said to be the turning point of the war. The Comte de Paris 
describes the Irish Brigade's participation in this decisive fight : 

" Fortunately Caldwell's strong division, which Meade has detached 
from the second corps as soon as he realized the importance of Long- 
street's attack, arrives in time to relieve the soldiers of Birney and Barnes. 
One of his brigades, commanded by the valiant Cross, supported the rem- 
nant of De Trobiard's command. Another, under Kelly, which forms the 
left division, has crossed Plum Run near the road, supports Ward along 
the slopes bordering on the right bank of this stream a little lower down. 
It is the Irish Brigade which, organized by Meagher, has already followed 
through the old gold harp embroidered on the green flag of Erin. It 
will fight with its wonted gallantry, for each soldier is ready to sacrifice 
his life with the more readiness that he has been prepared to die as a 
Christian. As the moment is drawing near for marching against the 
enemy all the ranks are kneeling, and the chaplain, mounted upon a rock 
which affords him a natural pulpit, has pronounced a general absolution 
on the whole brigade in the midst of a religious silence only interrupted 
by the fire of artillery. The command ' Forward ' immediately follows 
the sacred words of the priest ; the Irish have at once dashed into the 
thickest of the fight. They suddenly rout Anderson's Brigade in its 
advance." 

At this battle of Gettsyburg Captain Burke was in command of his 
regiment, the 88th Vols. 

With the remnant of his regiment General, then Colonel, Burke was on 
duty before Petersburg near the close of the war, when he was sent to 
take command of Fort Sedgwick, called by the soldiers Fort Hell, owing 
to its exposed position. It was garrisoned by four regiments belonging to 
the Second Corps, all numerically small. With these Colonel Burke had 
his own veteran corps, the 88th, now very much reduced by the cam- 
paign. The havoc of the long war had sent many a gallant fellow to 
a soldier's grave. Opposite to him was Fort Mahone, garrisoned by 
Finnigan's Confederate Brigade. At ten o'clock at night on October 29, 
1864, he received an order from General Miles to make demonstrations 
on his front as far as he could succeed, and if the enemy retreated before 
his advance to follow him vigorously and occupy his works. Colonel 
Burke, with the energy and soldierly qualities which he displayed all 
through the war, made the desired attack, and led with a sudden dash his 
forlorn hope. He lost one-third of his little force by the fire of the 
enemy, but he succeeded in occupying the position, and made a number of 
prisoners. Among those killed was a prominent Irishman named 
O'Driscoll ; he was shot through the Fenian badge he wore upon his 
breast. His friends removed his body for interment. The following 
order was issued in connection with this engagement : 

Headquarters ist Division, 2D Corps, 
October 31, 1864. 
Major Septimus Carncross, 
A. A. G., 2d Corps. 
Major : In compliance with instructions contained in circular of this 
date I have the honor to submit the following recommendation : 



82 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

That Colonel Burke, 88th Regt., N. Y. Vet. Vols., receive the rank of 
Brevet Brigadier General for gallantry in action, October 29, 1864. 
Colonel Burke, with a party of one hundred men, attacked and captured 
a portion of the enemy's line opposite Fort Sedgwick, taking some 
prisoners and holding the line until ordered to withdraw. 

Very Respectfully, 

N. A. Miles, 
Brig. Genl. 

While the army was investing Petersburg Colonel Burke's regiment 
presented him with a charger fully equipped and the following testimonial, 
which speaks for itself : 

TO COLONEL DENIS F. BURKE. 

Gratitude is a prominent ingredient in an Irishman's composition and we, the non-com- 
missioned officers and privates of the 

88TH NEW YORK VETERAN VOLUNTEERS, 

take this opportunity of testifying our gratitude by presenting you with this 

HORSE 

and equipments. It is unnecessary to dwell on the circumstances which evoked the 

manifestation of the sincerity of our good feeling toward you, but to 

recapitulate a few would be neither flattery nor out of place. 

When the tocsin sounded the alarm calling men to arms, when traitors sought to destroy 

the national life, you shouldered the musket like a true patriot and as a 

citizen volunteer participated in the first clash of arms. You 

subsequently aided in the organization of the 

IRISH BRIGADE, 

selecting the renowned and historical 

88TH AS THE REGIMENT 

of your choice ; with that you identified yourself through the varied phases of your old 

BRIGADE, 

clinging to the organization with zealous and patriotic tenacity, until you now stand 

at its head its acknowledged 

CHIEF, 
a proud position meritoriously earned, honorably and creditably upheld. 
You have commanded 
THE REGIMENT 
for a long period, during which your administration has been one of 
DISCIPLINE, JUSTICE, AND HUMANITY, 
bestowing no favors where men did not win them, while treating all alike with a fatherly 
care. You have been at our head in the hour of danger and among us in 
moments of relaxation, and your general conduct upon all occasions 
and under all circumstances has been such as to com- 
mand our highest esteem, and could our fallen 
comrades the brave 

DEAD 

speak, their willing, hearty lips would this day swell the glowing testimony to your worth. 

Thsse are a few among the many reasons we might adduce which have prompted 

this offering. We have called the animal 

ANTIETAM, 

in commemoration of the glorious battle won by a former beloved 

COMMANDER, 

when he drove the rebel hordes shattered and reeling across the Potomac 

and timely saved the 

NORTH 

from invasion, if not the 

CAPITAL 




r ^MK 



GENERAL DENIS F. BURKE, IRISH BRIGADE. 
From a photograph taken in 1866, shortly after his return from Ireland. 



A RETROSPECT. 83 

from destruction. Take him, sir, and in your career may the name be auspicious 

of victory for the 

UNION 

first and last ! 

AND MAY THAT GOOD GOD THAT SAVED YOU THROUGH 

the dangers already passed continue to protect you until the day arrives when under the 

IMMORTAL GREEN 
you can perform similar service for your native land to those now being performed for 

your adopted country ! 

Edward Wilson, Sergeant-Major. 
Richard E. Dowdall, Hospital Steward. 
Edward Kennedey, Principal Musician. 
John Carver, First Sergeant Co. A. 
Francis Kiernan, First Sergeant Co. B. 
Charles Lannon, First Sergeant Co. C. 
J. G. Fawkner, First Sergeant Co. D. 
Patrick J. Healy, First Sergeant Co E. 
John McDonnell, Commissary Sergeant. 
Camp Before Petersburg, Va., 

October 26, 1864. 

General Burke brought back the remnant of the gallant brigade, and 
declining the offer of service in the regular American army went home 
to Ireland to fight for the land of his birth. 

At this time General Burke was a young man, with all the vigor of 
youth and health ; he had the build and set-up of a soldier, tall and 
slightly made, and with the well-knit figure of an athlete, his dark brown 
hair, nearly black, fringed a face round and full with the ruddy hue of 
health, slightly bronzed from campaigning, but looking as fresh as if he 
never left the silver Lee, for near its witching banks he was born. A 
dark mustache fringed a mouth as rosy, pouting, and full as a woman's, 
but in his eye was the stern glance of the soldier, which melted into 
humor and smiles when greeting an intimate friend. 

The writer regrets he has not the war record of General William 
Halpin, whom Irishmen in Dublin pleasantly remember, to put into these 
sketches. He commanded a Kentucky regiment in the war, and remained 
in Ireland to serve the old cause until he was captured after the 
abortive rising of 1867. 

General Michael Kerwin has not much changed since he first came to 
Dublin ; * his hair, now slightly silvered, was then of a dark brown, of so 
dark a shade that it seemed to vie with the tint of the raven's wing. He 
had the carriage and peculiar finished grace of the cavalry soldier, with a 
sternness and gravity far beyond his years, for he was then a young man 
about twenty-eight years old ; his closely shaven face and ascetic appear- 
ance bespoke more the student than the soldier, but there was that in the 
glance of his eagle eye and the decisive tones when he issued any orders, 
which told at once the man accustomed to command men. Bates' " Martial 
Deeds of Pennsylvania " gives the following sketch of General Kerwin's 
military career. 

" Michael Kerwin, colonel of the 13th Cavalry, was born on the 15th 
of August, 1837, in the city of Waterford, Ireland, from which place his 
family emigrated during his early boyhood to America. He was edu- 
cated in a private academy in the city of Philadelphia, and in youth 
learned the business of a lithographic printer. Of a studious turn of 
mind he early acquired a good fund of general information. He was 
member, for several years of a volunteer militia company, in which he 
attained considerable knowledge of military organization and duty. 

"Three days after the call for troops in April, 1861, he volunteered 

* Written in September, 1887. 



84 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

as a private in the 24th regiment for three months' service. This 
organization formed part of Patterson's Army, with which he advanced 
into Virginia. Before crossing the Potomac, where it was known the 
enemy was present in considerable force, it became very important to the 
Union leader that he should know what troops he would have to meet. 
Some reliable soldier was required who should enter the rebel lines and 
gather the desired information. For this dangerous and important duty 
Kerwin volunteered his services. Full well he knew that, should he be dis- 
covered, death upon the gibbet awaited him. But he was not of the temper 
to hesitate when called for any duty which his country might demand. 
Adopting the necessary disguise he crossed the river, went freely through 
the enemy's camp, which he found near Martinsburg, and after making an 
estimate of the number of men and guns, and outlines of fortifications,, 
returned and reported to General Negley, then in command of the brigade 
to which he belonged. The successful manner in which this duty was 
performed and the judgment and daring which he displayed in execut- 
ing it marked him as worthy of a better rank than that of bearing the 
musket. 

"In September of this year, after having been discharged at the 
expiration of his first term, he was commissioned captain in the 13th 
Cavalry, and in July following was promoted major. During the 12th, 13th, 
14th, and 15th days of June, 1863, when Milroy's little force, in which the 
13th was serving, was confronted and finally routed by the advance 
of Lee's entire army, Major Kerwin at the head of his regiment rendered 
important service, having frequent conflicts with the over-confident rebel 
line. After leaving the valley the regiment was attached to the Army of 
the Potomac, when Major Kerwin was promoted to colonel and took 
command of the regiment. On the 12th of October, while on the advance 
picket line near the White Sulphur Springs, he was suddenly attacked by 
a heavy force of the rebel army, Lee seeking by a sudden movement to 
turn the Union right. Colonel Kerwin with his own in connection with 
the 4th Cavalry, combated the head of Ewell's columns for six long 
hours, giving time for Meade to recross the Rappahannock and get his 
army into position to checkmate the wily scheme of the rebel chieftain. 
Gallantly was his duty executed, but at the sacrifice of the two noble 
commands, large numbers of both being killed, wounded, and taken 
prisoners. 

" During the year 1864, Colonel Kerwin led his forces with Sheridan in 
his operation with the Army of the Potomac, for a time being in command 
of the 2d Brigade of Gregg's Division. In February, 1865, he went 
with his regiment from before Petersburg to City Point, where he pro- 
ceeded by transport to Wilmington, N. C, to meet Sherman, who 
was marching up from Georgia. On joining the grand column at Fayette- 
ville, Colonel Kerwin was assigned to the command of the 3d Brigade 
of Kilpatrick's Division. After the surrender of Johnston Colonel Kerwin 
was ordered to Fayetteville with his regiment and was placed in command 
of the post. He had seven counties under his control, and managed the 
affairs of his department with singular skill and ability. After the con- 
clusion of hostilities he returned to Philadelphia, where, near the close of 
July, he was mustered out of service, having been on duty continuously 
from the opening to the conclusion of the war." 

The birthplace of General Kerwin is erroneously given in this memoir ; 
he was born in the old patriotic county of Wexford, full of the memories 
of glorious though sad '98. The term rebel, so often applied bylrishmen 
to their loyal and patriotic countrymen, should be condemned ; it is a 
quotation from the enemy. The rebel Irish are the pro-British Orange- 
men, who are filled with seditious thoughts and rebellious action against 



A RETROSPECT. 85 

their native land. Irishmen regret this, but it is a melancholy fact. When 
Michael Kerwin, then a musketeer in the 24th Foot, got to the bank of 
the Potomac after his dangerous mission in the Southern lines, he some 
way missed his boat and had to wait by the river's bank not far from the 
enemy's pickets until morning dawned and his friends discovered his 
whereabouts. At break of day the Union pickets commenced to fire 
upon the Southerners, who briskly returned the fire. Kerwin being all the 
time under the fire of friend and foe; eventually he was released from 
his unpleasant position. With regard to the feelings which animated him 
under this very important duty when in the lines, those who held 
responsible positions can fully understand. There are silent posts of 
danger where a man's sense of honor can alone carry him through suc- 
cessfully. The fight in the Shenandoah Valley which Colonel Kerwin 
commanded, was interesting as being one of the movements which led 
up to Gettysburg, the turning point of the war. 

General Milroy, who was in command in the Shenandoah Valley, 
sent Colonel Kerwin to take command of an advanced post at Middle- 
ton, about eight or ten miles from Milroy's fortified post at Winchester. 
Kerwin had under his command one regiment of infantry, the 87th 
Penn. Vols., Colonel Shaw commanding ; Randolph Butt's artillery, 
half a battery ; and his own regiment, the 13th Cavalry. At a junc- 
tion of two roads leading into the Shenandoah Valley was situated 
a handsome country mansion. Some days previous a number of 
ladies, Southern in sympathy, arrived at this house ; they were rela- 
tives of the Confederate soldiers in General Lee's army and had fol- 
lowed the fortunes of their husbands, brothers, and fathers. They 
were aware that the whole of General Lee's army was on the march to 
enter Pennsylvania, of which Colonel Kerwin knew nothing. So they 
chaffed the " Yankee " officer on his probable fate as a prisoner with his 
whole command in the hands of the Southern Army. General Lee had 
stolen a march on the Union General Hooker. A. P. Hill's and Ewell's 
Army Corps were advancing into the Shennadoah Valley, and what the 
Union commander of this small outpost took to be a reconnoitering force 
of the enemy was the advance guard of General Hill's Army Corps. 
Kerwin posted his infantry, lining the road by which the Southern troops 
were advancing, ordering two troops of the 13th to advance and 
skirmish, to draw the Southerners into the line of fire. He awaited results 
close to the mansion occupied by the Southern ladies. His half battery 
of artillery he placed at the angle formed by the junction of the roads 
and the Southern dwelling ; sweeping the road with his artillery fire. The 
two troops of cavalry, after exchanging shots, retired on the regimental 
headquarters, hotly pursued by the eager Confederates. The Union 
infantry's fire on their flank and the artillery in front emptied a number 
of Southern saddles. The rebel advance was checked in confusion 
when Kerwin gave the order for the 13th to charge. The artillery 
officer, anxious for a farewell shot, fired as the command left Kerwin's 
mouth ; fortunately for that brave soldier, who was riding at the head of 
his men, the charge was an instant of time after Randolph Butt fired ; 
one more stride of Kerwin's horse and he was in the line of fire. 

Among the incidents of the charge, there was opportunity to record 
many cases of personal valor. Troop Sergeant Major Webb's (a gallant 
Corkman and married to a sister of Mr. O'Donovan Rossa's first wife, 
and like the last mentioned gentleman an Irish patriot) horse collided 
with the horse of a Southern cavalryman, and both animals stumbled, 
unhorsing their riders. " Surrender, you Yankee," shouted the rebel 
trooper. But Webb was on his feet in an instant, and reversing the posi- 
tion made captive his opponent, who had wounded him in the struggle. 



86 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

" Why did you not shoot the rebel when he attacked you on the ground ? " 
said his captain. " He had such a pleasant face, Captain Meany, I had 
not the heart to do it," replied the Irishman. Kerwin, who was leading 
the charge, was assailed by the rebel commander Ransom, who rode 
for Kerwin with his sword at the tierce point. Kerwin evaded the rebel's 
blow, and when Ransom was riding by, he raised himself in his stirrups 
and cut the rebel leader down. The writer learned these details from 
Captain Meany of the 13th, who rode in the charge, and who was made 
prisoner a few days after by the Southerners in trying to break through 
with the regiment when Milroy was surrounded. Thus Kerwin drew first 
blood against Lee's advanced guard on that famous march through 
Pennsylvania. The Southern advance was driven back with loss and 
the Confederate commander Ransom mortally wounded. This engage- 
ment at Middleton took place on Friday morning, June 12, 1863. 

Kerwin fell back on the main post at Winchester to report the Con- 
federate advance and rejoin General Milroy. The following Saturday 
morning they were surrounded by the advancing Confederates. All that 
day and the following Sunday the fighting around the position held by the 
Union general was very severe. General Hill's advanced corps tried to 
capture Milroy 's works by sheer force of numbers ; every advance was 
checked by the deadly fire of the Union troops. Each time that the re en- 
forced Southern columns delivered an attack they were met by a hail of 
bullets at close range from the intrenched Northerners; again and again the 
gallant Southerners reformed and rushed to the attack, only to be met with 
a deadly sheet of flame from the trenches of the Union soldiers. The 
advancing columns went down before that rain of bullets like a swath 
of grass before the scythe of the mower. This tide of death passed on 
while Milroy 's little force was being slowly thinned, his foes all the time 
rapidly increasing as fresh troops from the advancing main army arrived 
upon the scene. General Milroy called a council of war ; the majority of 
the officers advised capitulation ; every possible defense that their honor 
and limited force permitted, they considered exhausted. General Milroy 
was seated in a thoughtful, undecided mood, when Colonel Kerwin 
returned from duty. As if glad at the opportunity afforded him of con- 
sulting another of his officers, he told Kerwin of the council and asked 
his views. The Pennsylvania cavalry officer replied promptly : "General, 
we have already decided to cut our way as best we can to Harper's Ferry. 
I see no reason to change our original intention, but any orders you have 
to give me I will endeavor to carry out." Milroy brightened up at hear- 
ing Ker win's answer ; he decided not to surrender. General Milroy and 
some one or two of his officers were rank Abolitionists, and it had been 
reported that the Confederates threatened to hang them if captured, as 
partisans before the war. Be this as it may, Milroy prepared for retreat 
from a position no longer tenable. Kerwin succeeded in reaching 
Harper's Ferry with the remains of his regiment, the 13th, after severe 
fighting. One squadron reached Pennsylvania by another road, separated 
in the fight from their comrades. 

American historians have not given this fight in the Shenandoah 
Valley the importance it deserved. Lee's army, having got away from 
Hooker, were they not detained at Middleton and Winchester, would 
have been in full march for Philadelphia. There was no Union army to 
bar their passage or any force that could be brought together in the 
necessary time to stay the career of the Southern legions. With General 
Lee in Philadelphia and his army encamped in such a prominent and 
important Northern city, it would be difficult to speculate what fresh dis- 
asters awaited the North. As it was, some Southern cavalry entered 
Harrisburg. The fight at Middleton and the determined and glorious 



A RETROSPECT. 87 

defense at Winchester detained the Confederates in the valley from 
Friday morning until Monday following, giving Hooker time to recover 
from his surprise and probably helped to change the fortunes of the war 
and made the battle of Gettysburg possible. 

The other portion of General Kerwin's career is told by the historian 
Bates, which is here quoted. It will be read there that on a subsequent 
occasion, when in command of his own and the 4th Cavalry, he kept 
back Lee's advance twenty-four hours, giving time for Meade to recross 
the Rappahannock with the Union Army. After a brilliant career as a 
soldier he so conducted the civil affairs of the district round Fayette- 
ville, N. C, that the Mayor and citizens presented him with the fol- 
lowing address on his departure — a proof of his ability and kindness, 
for the Southern people had no strong love at this time for Northern 
officers : 

Fayetteville, N. C, July 5, 1865. 
Colonel M. Kerwin, commanding Post Fayetteville, N. C. 

Colonel : In behalf of the citizens of Fayetteville the Mayor and 
Commissioners desire to express the most decided approbation of your 
administration of affairs while in command of this post. 

It is not forgotten that when you came among us, we were in the- 
midst of confusion ; our condition was peculiar and anomalous ; the arm 
of the civil power was too weak to give protection to the citizens, even 
had we enjoyed comparative tranquillity ; as it was we were almost 
on the verge of anarchy — very near that point where brute force becomes 
the only arbiter. 

Besides this the waves of passion, produced by the terrible storm of 
war which had raged for four years, had not then subsided, and the 
Government whose officer you are was by many regarded as cruelly 
inimical to our interests. 

To restore order, by the exercise of just so much force as was neces- 
sary, and at the same time to so temper your rule as to make the people 
feel and know that you would protect and not oppress them, was the task 
before you. This task was a most difficult and delicate one — but you 
have performed it — the result proves the work. 

Your administration has been characterized by a happy blending of 
gentleness and firmness ; by gentleness you have won the hearts of our 
people ; by firmness you have secured respect for legitimate authority. 
The work of reconstruction will be easy in this community, and nothing, 
we assure you, has been more conducive to this than the manner in 
which you have discharged your duties. To-day the people of this com- 
munity are capable of self-government, ready to do all that is required of 
good citizens ; and it is felt that to your instrumentality, in a great 
measure, is this to be attributed. 

Allow us, in conclusion, Colonel, to tender to you, and to the officers 
and men under your command, the sincere thanks of our people for your 
successful efforts to promote our welfare, and to assure you that you 
carry with you the kind wishes of all for your health, prosperity, and 
well being. With sentiments of profound regard, we remain, Colonel, 
very truly your friends. 

Archd. McLean, Mayor. 
E. L. Pemberton, A. G. Thornton, 
N. M. Orrell, M. McKinnon, 

I. L. Pore, K. A. Black, 

James N. Lee, 

Commissioners. 



88 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

General Kerwin left Fayetteville with his regiment, the 13th Penn. 
Cavalry, for Philadelphia, where they were mustered out. From thence 
he proceeded to Ireland to give his native land the benefit of his military 
skill and experience gained upon American battlefields. 

Captain James Murphy was a veteran soldier, although comparatively 
a young man when he came to Ireland. He had seen a great deal of 
frontier fighting in the United States Regular Army before the outbreak of 
the Civil War ; was in the Seminole War and in the dreary march over 
the plains to Utah. When the war of secession broke out, Mr. Murphy 
joined the 20th Mass. Vols. He was commissioned captain ; all his 
brother officers were Harvard men, and the regiment was frequently 
called after that famous seat of learning. To give Captain James 
Murphy's military career would be to write the history of the Civil War; 
like the hundreds of thousands of gallant Irishmen who took part in that 
gigantic struggle, Captain Murphy did his duty nobly by his adopted 
country. He was engaged in every battle that was fought by the Army 
of the Peninsula from McClellan and Meade, to Grant's command of 
these armies, and after the surrender at Appomattox, he offered his 
sword to his beloved motherland, to fight the self-same foe that secretly 
tried to disrupt the American Union. For Britain's hatred of Ireland 
for refusing to accept her sway is not more intense than she feels for 
this glorious republic that defeated her armies so frequently in the long 
fought out struggle for independence. 

These are the records of some of those men who sat in council to 
organize an insurrectionary war in Ireland, to establish a firm, stable, and 
independent government in the old Isle of the Gaels, similar to that 
'established by George Washington in America, facing the same aggres- 
sive and relentless foe. The British enemy, always seeking to slander 
•and calumniate the Irish race, have in every instance tried to lessen the 
imoral standard and intellectual abilities of the Irishmen who were 
-engaged in the struggle against their domination in Ireland. 

It may be thought even by friendly critics that these memoirs are 
digressions from the main purport of this work, but it will be recollected 
that British writers have the ear of the world, and owing to the language 
•even use the literature of the United States to belittle and slander Irish 
National leaders, and that it is absolutely necessary to go into these 
American war reminiscences to show the manner of men who went to 
Ireland in the fall of 1865 to fight for the Irish republic. The few men 
-spoken of here are put before the readers as representatives of many 
others their equals both in rank and ability, who arrived in Ireland that 
eventful year ; and it is one of the unpublished important facts in con- 
nection with Ireland's many failures to take the field, that a great com- 
mander of historic reputation would have been forthcoming had events 
shaped themselves in a more resolute manner. 

It may be asked, why did not General Kerwin or the other members 
of the military council depose Stephens and assume the direction of 
affairs ? Ireland, unfortunately, had not found her Moses or her 
Washington among the men then in authority. 

The ablest man in the ranks of the American Fenians, according to 
general reputation, was Major General Thomas Smyth, who, unfortunately 
for Ireland, was killed leading a charge in the last battle before Peters- 
burg. It has been said by some of the thinking minds then in Ireland 
who knew General Smyth, that had he survived the Civil War in America 
he would have promptly assumed the responsibilities at this crisis. He 
would have placed at once the men in the field, sweeping from his path 
the nerveless and feeble C. O. I. R. General Kerwin fully believed this 
would have been the result if a strong man like General Smyth had been 



A RETROSPECT. 89 

then in Ireland. He also gave many reasons why he or his comrades 
on the council could not assume the direction of military movements in 
opposition to Stephens by at once taking action, the necessity for which 
they at once saw. By far the ablest man then in authority, Colonel 
Thomas J. Kelly, failed to see the great power to the Irish republic and 
confusion to the enemy in the enrolled Irish soldiers in the foeman's 
ranks. All these gallant Irish-American soldiers only realized the 
importance of this element when it was too late. 

Had the war commenced as urged by the Military Council, Ireland 
would soon have found capable leaders, also sound and brilliant statesmen. 
Among the Irish people in Ireland there were hundreds of men then 
unknown whom the war would have brought to the front, fully equal to 
their brothers from America, and more experienced from the life-long 
knowledge of the nation and its wants and the political situation in 
Ireland. 

Whenever Ireland puts forth her strength, she has the same oppor- 
tunity while her population remains near its present standard. But the 
clouds which darken Irish intellect must be completely dispelled before 
she could take the field with hope of success. These degrading agitations, 
miscalled National, are as impossible of success as it would be to seek 
help from the planets. The invader will never, never, under any circum- 
stances, peacefully surrender the smallest modicum of power to an Irish 
representative assembly. Home Rule, as the Irish people understand it, 
is as mad a dream to be acquired by British legislation as the legendary 
leprechauns and their crocks of gold. To say that Britain will legislate 
against her own interests is the wildest dream imaginable. 

The Home Rule pursuit is the worst of all possible follies, for the 
enemy is destroying the Irish race though enforced emigrations while the 
Irish people are pursuing the Home Rule phantom. 

War with the invader on the other hand is quite feasible, and its success 
is neither impossible nor improbable, but it can never be commenced by 
Ireland while her people are taught the imaginary and exaggerated 
power of the foe. Ireland would find Britain's boasted strength as false 
as the cowardly teachings of her own physical weakness. If four millions 
of people cannot fight and conquer from sixty thousand to seventy thou- 
sand British mercenaries, the great majority of them boys between sixteen 
years and twenty years old, then Ireland is not fit for freedom. The stale 
British brag of thirty millions of population is all a fallacy. The British 
people en massexvlW not fight unless invaded, and even then Lord Wolseley, 
their ablest commander, positively states that should one hundred thou- 
sand foreign troops invade Britain she would be conquered. The lack of 
patriotism and the cowardice of the British people have been testified 
again and again. In Crimean days, when the drum beat over the 'land for 
troops, only the unfortunate and poverty stricken took the Queen's 
shilling. Again, in the feverish days of the Indian mutiny, when Britain 
was in doubt as to the result of the insurrection and the loss of her East- 
ern Empire hung in the balance, the stolid Britisher refused to come to 
the aid of his flag ; only the same unfortunate class enlisted. During the 
Franco-Prussian war a panic pervaded all Britain, and many imaginary 
battles showing her complete collapse under invasion were written. The 
"" Battle of Dorking " was one of these brochures, but all in vain as to any 
practical results. The thoughts of universal liability to service as on the 
Continent, was scouted by the whole people. Truly did Napoleon call 
them a nation of shopkeepers. John Bull pays an army to do his fight- 
ing ; he prefers to be brave over the tap-room fire. Ireland's success in a 
fight with this nation of wealthy braggarts is not by any means problem- 
atical. The heaviest battalions would most certainly be found on the 



90 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Irish side if war was once commenced. The panic which pervades the 
British masses and classes at the vaguest rumor of Irish insurrection 
ought to teach Irishmen the lesson (and it would but for the pro-British 
agitators who pose as Nationalists) that Ireland's destiny lies in her own 
hands. 

The Boers who met this braggart and cowardly nation in open fight 
soon showed what mettle the boasted power of Britain was made of. Let 
Ireland take as manly a stand and the British flag will cease to cover an 
inch of Irish soil. 

On the arrival of the leading Irish American military men in Ireland,. 
as soon as possible they made themselves acquainted with the condition 
of affairs. 

Their first and greatest need was the arming of the men. Stephens" 
absuid talk of pikes in the then condition of warfare they cast aside ; they 
had better knowledge of the American Fenians' ability to help Ireland 
than the men at home ; they saw from what they came in contact with 
that there was splendid fighting material on the ground, and to arm them 
and begin the insurrection was the duty of the hour. The soldiery which 
had joined the Irish movement would be invaluable in aiding her people 
to capture the enemy's arsenals by surprise. The Pigeon House Fort, 
Dublin, at the mouth of the Liffey, held all the arms belonging to the Irish 
militia, and a great quantity of war munitions. Over thirty thousand stand 
of arms, with all the necessary military equipments, were stored in this fort, 
which was guarded by a company of infantry and some artillery, 160 
men all told ; 60 of these were sworn members of the I. R. B., and like 
all the military at that time eager to see Ireland take the field. 

With this information in their possession the Military Council prepared 
a plan of insurrection which they first submitted to the more prominent 
officers then in Dublin city, and which met with their cordial approval. 

The plan of campaign was for the C. O. I. R., who unfortunately 
held despotic power, to order up from the country twenty thousand picked 
men. This force could be brought into Dublin without exciting any 
suspicion, as the Dublin Exposition was then open and excursion parties 
came into the city daily to visit the great crystal palace and view the 
international exhibits. On the arrival of these men, the Pigeon House 
was to be seized by two hundred Irishmen armed with revolvers, these,, 
to be admitted into the fort by the I. R. B. sentinels at the gate, making 
prisoners of the remnant of the garrison. Vans with a guard of eight 
hundred men were to be as near as possible to remove the arms and 
ammunition. During the transit of these weapons an insurrection inside 
the military barracks of the enemy would not only occupy the invader's 
officials, but add a valuable contingent to the patriot's ranks. In the 
Phoenix Park the Irish soldiers were to be massed ready to receive the 
captured weapons. 

The distribution of the arms could be soon accomplished and Ireland 
would then have an army well armed and with plenty of ammunition to 
begin the war of independence. As soon as organized into battalions 
and brigades, they were to march out of Dublin city into the interior or to 
follow whatever decision the Provisional Government came to. Among the 
large number of American arrivals, fresh from the battlefields in the South, 
there were numbers to take subaltern commands who were accustomed to 
command regiments. The general officers were practical soldiers, accus- 
tomed to command in the field and to handle every branch of the service 
and direct masses of men. There were plenty of skilled artillery officers, 
some who had been in the regular army of the United States and had 
the advantage of a scientific education. For minor commands there were 
a numerous body to select from ; many that were useless and encum- 



A RETROSPECT. 91 

brances during the long delay enforced by Stephens' vacillation ; these 
would have proved valiant and intrepid soldiers in the field. 

When this plan was submitted to a board of officers and to the Dublin 
centres they were all satisfied ; as to the latter they were delighted and 
exuberant at what appeared to be the near prospect of fight. At this time 
the I. R. B. and the whole country was in a splendid condition to take the 
field ; the morale of the men was at the acme of perfection. Some of the 
centers suggested that more men might be needed to attack the Pigeon 
House, but General Kerwin convinced them that two hundred men was 
sufficient to make themselves master of the fort. Some of Mr. Stephens' 
immediate followers, who knew more about intriguing than fighting, sug- 
gested that a number of men surprise the Pigeon House by entering at low 
water from the Strand. This was scouted by the military men as absurd ; 
the real strength of the Irish attack depended on the loyalty to Ireland of 
the soldiers inside, and there was no need for any theatrical arrangement, 
but boldly march in at the open gate. 

The following is General Kerwin's published account of this plan of 
insurrection. 

" A Military Council was now formed by authority of Mr. Stephens 
at the request of the organization in America, which it was intended 
should take entire control of all the military management of the 
business in Ireland. But it was soon discovered that the C. O. I. R. had 
no intention of allowing any power or authority to pass out of his hands, 
and the very first proposition the council submitted, to have the country 
divided into military districts, was vetoed by the commander-in-chief. 
The reasons he assigned for refusing his consent to this plan of getting 
the people under military discipline were so absurd, that some of the 
members took occasion to express their opinions in a way which was not 
entirely complimentary to the C. O. I. R. This being faithfully reported 
to him, he was evidently convinced that to play the dictator with such 
men might endanger his standing with the American branch of the 
organization. So he thereupon called a council of all the leaders in Ire- 
land, who were instructed to meet him in Dublin on a certain night, for 
the purpose of discussing plans for the future. He also requested some 
of the officers of the council to prepare plans for the capture of the city 
and for a general ' rising.' This, it was supposed, would keep the 
military intruders busy for a time, and allow the statesmen to prepare 
their plans for a prolonged administration of the ' Irish Republic virtually 
established.' The night of the meeting arrived, and, as the expectation 
of a fight was in everybody's mind, the officers had their plans ready for 
the investigation of the C. O. I. R. and other leaders of the movement 
who were expected to be present. 

"The first plan submitted was for the capture of the City of Dublin, 
and as that was the principal achievement to be gained the plans were all 
minutely explained. The first point of importance to be taken was the 
Pigeon House, which was chiefly valuable on account of the large quan- 
tity of arms and military stores it contained. It was garrisoned by 160 
men only, 60 of whom were sworn members of the organization and 
were ready to obey any orders they received from its chief. In this 
stronghold were stored twenty-five thousand stand of arms, and the plan 
proposed to Mr. Stephens was to get possession of these arms. He 
asked the officer : 

" ' How many men do you require to carry out the plan ? ' 

" ' One thousand men,' was the reply. 

" ' Well, I can give you six thousand if necessary. Now, let us hear 
what you propose doing.' 

" ' Well, I propose to take two hundred picked men, armed with 



92 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

revolvers, and dispose of them at points already selected adjacent to the 
garrison. At a prearranged signal from our friends inside they will 
march in, take possession of the place, make prisoners of the enemy, and 
shoot those who resist. I will then have eight hundred good men, well 
organized and under command of competent officers, already under 
orders to assemble at a given time in the vicinity, into whose hands I will 
put the arms taken from the garrison, and this force will guard the 
wagons already provided to convey the arms and ammunition to Phoenix 
Park.' 

" ' And what will you do with them there ? ' 

" ' This : On the day previous you will have twenty thousand men 
ordered up from the country districts for actual service. The Exhibition 
is in progress at present, and every day excursion trains bring to the 
city from ten to thirty thousand people to visit it, so the arrival of our 
friends will excite no unusual suspicion. You will order these men to 
assemble in the Park, and, inside of six hours after the capture of the 
Pigeon House, we can march out of Dublin with an army of twenty or 
twenty-five thousand men. I will pledge my life to carry out this much 
of the plan, and after that you may issue such orders as you think proper ; 
I will stand in nobody's way.' 

" This plan was received with favor by all present. Some of the lead- 
ers from the country districts were enthusiastic over it. All the officers 
who were consulted approved heartily of it. The only difference of opin- 
ion was as to the number of men asked to carry out the enterprise. But 
it was clearly shown that a greater number of men would be simply in the 
way, and as everything depended on prompt and secret action, it was 
conceded that the force named was ample to do the work. Mr. Stephens 
seemed disinclined to express an opinion. But it soon became manifest 
that he was not in favor of the plan, as it was very likely to interfere 
with one of his own, which he very soon uncovered in his conversation 
with the 'centres.' The question he soon put fully developed his object, 
which was to postpone the fight. He asked the representatives if, in 
case of a postponement, they could hold their forces together for three 
months longer, could they be assured that where they had but one rifle 
now at the expiration of that time they could have three ? This was 
not a fair question ; the men had been summoned to Dublin to consult 
about the best way of preparing for a fight, and now they were being 
used simply to justify Mr. Stephens' back-out. This view of the matter 
was intimated in a mild way by one of the officers of the council. But 
Mr. Stephens resented the situation very indignantly. 

" The result of the conference, therefore, as might easily be foreseen, 
was to put off the fight for three months longer. Disappointment could 
be traced in every face, indignation and resentment on many, and more 
than one brave, strong man left the room in tears." 

General Kerwin is unconsciously mixing up two distinct meetings. 
It was in the early autumn when the plans of insurrection were sub- 
mitted to Mr. Stephens and the conference, when the great C. O. I. R. 
refused to take action until the close of the year to enable the Americans 
to come to his help. The meeting at which the fight was postponed for 
three months occurred at Colonel Kelly's lodgings ; it was at this meeting 
that General Kerwin rebuked Stephens for his vacillation, and questioned 
his promise of receiving an additional supply of arms. This happened 
at the end of December. 

On the morning of Saturday, November n, 1865, Dublin was startled 
at the news that James Stephens was arrested at Fairfield House, Sandy- 
mount ; with him were arrested Charles Kickham, Hugh Brophy, and 
Edward Duffey. Money and arms were seized by the police, who did not 



A RETROSPECT. 93 

expect so easy a victory. For the first time it began to dawn upon the 
men who stopped to think that the great C. O. I. R. was a coward. 
What meant this ostentatious display of revolvers ? Were they merely 
kept for sensational exhibition to impress Irish visitors, or was there 
any intention to use them by any of the men arrested ? It was thought 
not, and that a great National movement had a nerveless man for its chief. 
One of the Dublin papers thus commented on these arrests. 

" Let us compare the arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald with that of 
Mr. Stephens. He who was to be the head of real revolution was con- 
cealed in a house in Thomas Street, being in bed ill when Major Sirr and 
the military entered ; but he fought desperately against his assailants and 
did not suffer himself to be captured till he had received a dozen wounds. 
Mr. Stephens, the head centre of this present wordy revolution, had been 
living luxuriously in a handsomely furnished house stored with provisions 
for twelve months, surrounded by a wall six feet high, enjoying the 
society of his wife and friends, with an ample supply of arms and ammu- 
nition. But though loaded revolvers lay near the hands of this little 
band of heroes — the proud representatives of the ancient Fenians, the 
bold asserters of Irish chivalry, they did not dare to touch one of them. 
Like Major Sirr, Colonel Lake went to Sandymounton Saturday morning 
with a detachment of constables prepared for some resistance, perhaps a 
bloody struggle, but not a blow was struck, not a scratch was received." 

General Kervvin thus mentions these arrests. 

" On Saturday, November 11, 1865, the City of Dublin was electrified 
with the cry ' Stephens is arrested ! ' ' Stephens is arrested ! ' It was 
soon found to be true. 

" Fairfield House at Sandymount, where Stephens resided under the 
assumed name of Herbert, was surrounded on Saturday morning just 
before daylight by the whole of the ' G ' division of police, guided by the 
notorious Dawson, the Dublin detective. The fences were immediately 
scaled and an entrance effected through the back door. No resistance 
was offered, though all the inmates slept with revolvers under their pil- 
lows. Stephens was first taken into custody and then followed the arrest 
of Charles J. Kickham, Hugh Brophy, and Edward Duffey. A large 
sum of money, amounting to nearly two thousand pounds, together with 
plentiful supply of groceries and wines, were found in the house. This 
coup d'etat, it was surmised by the Crown authorities, would end the 
struggle. But their surmises were doomed to disappointment." 

James Stephens was brought before police magistrate, Mr. Stronge, 
and remanded until the following Tuesday, November 14. In reply to 
the magistrate's question if Mr. Stephens wished to say anything, the C. 
O. I. R. replied : " Except that I wish it to be distinctly understood that 1 
have no attorney or lawyer engaged." 

When Stephens was arrested without the slightest attempt at resistance, 
many men began to speak of him with contempt, for Irishmen hate cow- 
ards, but since have found a reasonable excuse, saying he was surprised ; 
there is no doubt that Stephens had not the faintest idea of police officers, 
he had lived in such fancied security, and had he not allowed his wife's 
family, who were tracked to Sandymount, to come near him, he might 
have rested in his mansion a little longer. When he went down in his 
nightshirt to answer the bell he thought it was the gardener, until the 
police officer's voice undeceived him. 

At that time, very fortunately for the C. O. I. R., a brave and gallant 
soldier, Captain John Kirwan, was then residing in Dublin. This soldier's 
conduct was so remarkable and his prominence as an active and energetic 
officer in the Irish Republican ranks of such importance that a sketch of 



94 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

his career is necessary. Captain John Kirwan belonged to a class of 
Irishmen then resident in their native land, who would have undoubtedly- 
come to the front if the Irish forces had taken the field against the 
foreign invaders. 

John Kirwan was born in Dublin city, and in early life imbibed the 
teachings of Davis, Mitchell, and the men of '98. Like many of his com- 
rades he deplored the false teaching of the Provincialists, who were 
knowingly or unknowingly helping the enemy to depopulate the country 
by keeping inert the young manhood of Ireland, looking to a foreign 
Parliament for redress from grievances, that could not be removed while 
a foreign flag and foreign soldiery held sway in their native land. John 
Kirwan was a man of powerful physique, standing over six feet in height, 
of strong and stalwart build ; he was a trained athlete from his earliest 
years, and would have been a valuable addition as a trooper to any army 
in the days when personal prowess and strength decided victories. John 
Kirwan was a voracious reader, and every book on campaigning he could 
procure he eagerly devoured. The campaigns of Caesar, Frederick the 
Great, and Napoleon found in him a diligent student. Not content with 
trying to study the theory of war, John Kirwan was determined to 
become a practical soldier, with the one object in view — the determination 
of doing something to help his countrymen to drive the foreign usurpers 
from the sacred soil of his motherland. 

While yet a young man he joined the City of Dublin Artillery, and so 
quick was he in learning " the soldier's glorious trade " that he was rapidly 
promoted. But the life of a soldier in peace had few charms for the 
young Irishman. A number of his friends had volunteered to join an 
Irish corps then forming in Italy to defend the Papal Territory against 
all aggressors. John Kirwan became a Papal soldier. 

At the battle of Castlefidardo the Irish soldiers were in charge of 
eleven pieces of artillery. Kirwan's previous military training made him 
a useful soldier, and he had been rapidly promoted. In the midst of the 
battle, at the head of his men, he charged across the river Musone and, 
with the headlong valor of the Irish Celt, they planted their standard on 
some field works of the foe. Among the brave Irishmen who charged 
with Captain Kirwan across the Musone at the battle of Castlefidardo was 
Daniel Byrne, subsequently a warder in Richmond Bridewell, Dublin city. 

Captain Kirwan, as a recognition for his bravery, received the Gold 
Cross of Knighthood and the war medal. At the close of this short 
campaign he, with his brother Irishmen, returned to Ireland. He came 
back, like all his comrades, with scarcely an exception, imbued with 
strong revolutionary tendencies. The spread of the Irish National 
movement in Dublin found Captain Kirwan soon enrolled in its ranks. 
He was an invaluable recruit, both for his energy as an organizer and his 
military knowledge. In a short time he had recruited a circle of nearly 
one thousand men, of which he became centre. He endeavored to give 
them military training, notwithstanding the difficulties under which he, 
like all his comrades, was placed. But in spite of the enemy's vigilance, 
Captain Kirwan, assisted by other military friends, continued to drill the 
men in batches of ten and twenty. 

On September 15, 1865, Captain Kirwan was an Inspector on the 
Grand Canal in Dublin city. That evening he was drilling his men over 
a barber shop opposite Catherine's Church in Thomas Street, when one 
of the sentinels reported that the police were massing in the centre of 
the street. This was an unusual occurrence, and the Irish Republican 
recruits broke ranks and grouped around a centre table, where a raffle 
commenced, expecting a visit from the foe's detectives. They had 
scarcely more than seated themselves round the table, when a messenger 



A RETROSPECT. 95 

arrived to notify him that the enemy had begun active hostilities by 
breaking into the Irish People office in Parliament Street, smashing and 
removing the type, seizing all correspondence, account books, etc. He 
was also informed that every man suspected of National opinions was 
made prisoner by the enemy's police. Kirwan's first impulse was to arm 
his men (rifles and ammunition were stored in the room over which they 
drilled) and attack the foe, commencing the fight by charging the police 
in the street below. But a peremptory order to remain quiet, purporting 
to come from Stephens, calmed the fiery Irish soldier for the present. 
His next step was the preservation of their arms. He ordered several 
coffins to be sent at once to his drill hall, and carefully greasing and 
packing his rifles and bayonets, he prepared them for burial. Three 
large floats called at 4 a. m. the following day, and with a small number 
of his men, he interred the coffins in a suburban graveyard, where 
they remained until March 3, 1867. 

The following morning (Saturday), Captain Kirwan attended to his 
duty, as Inspector of Canals, after which he proceeded to the house of 
Mr. Joseph Cromien, 33 South Great George's Street. This house 
was filled with indignant men, members of the I. R. B. Most of them 
were armed with revolvers. The events of the previous night were 
discussed. On Kirwan moving toward the street door, he espied his 
imprisoned comrades coming up from Dame Street en route to Rich- 
mond Bridewell. In Mr. Cromien 's shop there were several leading Dub- 
lin patriots, Edward Byrne, Matthew Neill, Michael Cody, Dennis Dug- 
gan, and many others. Acting on impulse, Captain Kirwan called on 
them loudly to follow him and rescue their brave friends from captivity. 
The police van containing the Irish prisoners was guarded by four mounted 
policeman, who it was thought would not display much opposition to an 
attempt to release their prisoners. Following close behind were two out- 
side cars filled with detectives, many of them equally impassive, and who 
would be only glad of a pretext to see their prisoners released. Byrne, 
Cody, and others protested against Kirwan's proposed action in the face 
of Stephens' positive orders. But the ex-Papal soldier was in no mood 
for peaceful advice. His comrades, seeing that their words were of no 
avail, seized him bodily and disarmed him ; so the opportunity which 
presented itself was lost. The men who restrained Kirwan from his 
attack on the prison van were not one iota less daring or patriotic than 
himself, but discipline kept them back. James Stephens' orders were 
followed with that prudence which so frequently takes possession of Irish 
leaders in emergencies, and the brave Irish patriots are made to appear 
poltroons before the world. 

Late that Saturday, and early the following Sunday morning, it was 
reported in Irish National circles that Captain Kirwan was captured by 
the enemy. This rumor, reaching Kirwan's ears, made him determine 
to show himself in the city. In his rambles he met a detective named 
Quinn, who informed him that there was a warrant for his arrest already 
issued. Captain Kirwan asked him if he were told to tell him that. It 
may be here remarked that one of the enemy's ruses in Ireland is to 
convey mysteriously, as if in friendship, to some female or male relative, 
that there is a warrant out for the arrest of their relative, son, husband, 
or brother, as the case may be, which so alarms his friends that he is at 
once sent out of the country, unless the Nationalist sought for is a man 
of courage and a genuine patriot. Many weak men come to the United 
States, boasting they've been " on the run " under such hints. The enemy 
find this a convenient and easy manner to rid themselves of a man who 
may become hostile to their usurpation, or become the occasion of rais- 
ing opposition in the mind of his friends. 



96 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Captain Kirwan was made of sterner stuff ; he went home, put his 
house in order in the event of a visit from the foe, and calmly awaited 
events. He had determined he should not be arrested without making 
a fight, so he barricaded his house that Sunday night, and with a 
loaded revolver by his side, he went to bed. His wife was a most 
patriotic Irishwoman, and she encouraged him to resist capture by every 
possible means. 

Armed with a stout cudgel and a loaded revolver, Captain Kirwan left 
home to attend to his business on the Grand Canal. At 9 a, m. a posse 
of detectives visited his house. His wife, acting under instructions from 
her husband, demanded to see the warrant before admitting them. Kir- 
wan wished to know positively if such a document was actually in exist- 
ence. They made a search of the house but found nothing to repay their 
trouble. 

In the meantime Captain Kirwan, after reporting for duty at the 
Grand Canal House, saw three of the enemy's detectives, Giles, King, and 
Smith, waiting near a small foot-bridge which crosses the canal at James' 
Basin. Full well he knew their errand, and was prepared to defend his 
liberty at all hazard. When they saw Kirwan they hurriedly consulted 
together, and Giles, who knew him personally, approached as if to parley 
with him, while the others came up on either side to make the seizure 
secure. 

Captain Kirwan walked quickly away from his three foes. Giles fol- 
lowed, but failing to overtake him broke into a run, thereby betraying 
his purpose. Giles had now separated himself about one hundred yards 
from his two companions ; this was Kirwan's object, so he slackened his 
pace and allowed Giles to come up. The detective came up panting, a 
little out of breath and excited, fumbled in his pockets and produced the 
warrant of arrest. Quick as lightning the captain raised his cudgel and 
Giles, bleeding from a wound, lay prostrate. The other two detectives 
were advancing to Giles' assistance ; Kirwan assailed the foremost man, 
Smith, and he too measured his length upon the turf. King drew his 
revolver and swore he would shoot Kirwan if he did not surrender. The 
captain promptly got behind an elm tree, and pointing his revolver at 
King, told him that he and his comrades might now blaze away. Kirwan 
employed several men pulling weeds and doing other jobs on the canal. 
These men came now to Kirwan's assistance and interposed between him 
and his would be captors. Kirwan suddenly replaced his revolver in his 
belt and jumped into the canal and swam to the opposite bank. 

Hurrying along the banks, he met his wife and a lady friend, who came 
to warn him of his danger. He hailed a canal boat bound for Limerick 
and stowed himself away on board. The master, Hutchinson, and his 
crew, were active members of the National organization and in full sym- 
pathy with Captain Kirwan. On his arrival at Shannon's Harbor, Kings 
County, he met a friend, Mr. James Healy, who gave him shelter and sup- 
plied him with money. After a few days he reached Limerick City, where 
he met a numerous circle of friends. The following October Captain 
Kirwan returned to Dublin. 

The men who were employed inside Richmond Bridewell were mem- 
bers of Captain Kirwan's circle of the I. R. B. His former comrade, the 
brave soldier of Castlefidardo, Daniel Byrne, had brought every patriotic 
man he could into the organization. When Captain Kirwan returned to 
Dublin he ordered his men to resume drilling at that time, as no Irish- 
men for a moment doubted that the Irish war of independence would soon 
be inaugurated. 

Captain Kirwan, on hearing of Stephens' arrest, sent for Daniel Byrne 
to arrange for the C. O. I. R.'s escape. He also saw one of the officials of 



A RETROSPECT. 97 

the I. R. B., John Ryan of Liverpool, and told him of his idea of taking- 
Stephens out of prison, and asked Ryan to have word sent to the council. 
He also bade Ryan see Daniel Byrne and arrange for a meeting at a 
house in Camden Street on Monday morning ; this interview with Ryan 
took place on Sunday next following Stephens' arrest. Ryan, who went 
in Dublin by the name of Captain Doherty, lost no time in having the 
information conveyed to the council. He sought the messenger who was 
one of the I. R. B. secret police named John Graham, who communicated 
Captain John Kirwan's proposition to Colonel Thomas Kelly, James 
Stephens' chief officer. Colonel Kelly sent word for Captain Kirwan 
and Daniel Byrne the warder to come to his house. General Michael 
Kerwin had, through Colonel Kelly's suggestion, arranged to meet 
Danial Byrne in Camden Street. This house in Camden Street was a 
convenient and safe rendezvous ; the young men who conducted it were 
earnest members of the organization. Captain John Kirwan met his 
friend. Daniel Byrne and told him that as he, Kirwan, could not openly 
move about to see the council and obey all orders from them, Ryan 
would put him into communication with the proper men. Byrne and 
Ryan had not long left Captain John Kirwan, when John Graham met 
them with General Kerwin's message. The hour appointed was a little 
later. Daniel Byrne had never met General Kerwin and did not know 
whom he was about to see ; but contented with the orders given him by 
his centre, felt satisfied he was all right. General Kerwin had a private 
interview with him, he told Byrne who he was and put the question direct 
to Daniel Byrne, Could he release Stephens, and, if he could, would he 
aid in his escape? To this question Byrne replied, " I am the night 
watchman and the only man in the prison who can do it easily ; you can 
depend your life on me to do what I can." Kerwin was struck at the 
manly, straightforward reply of this stalwart Irishman. He said to him, 
"You will have to go to America; when your duty is accomplished I 
will place ^50 at your disposal." " No, General," replied Byrne, " I 
want no money and will take none ; doing my duty by my country is all 
the reward I seek." General Kerwin then told him that Captain Doherty 
would bring him that evening to see himself and Colonel Kelly, where 
they would go into further details. 

Daniel Byrne, who was a sincere and practical Irish patriot, knew 
from the many conversations he had with John Breslin that he was an 
Irishman of sound, honest views, although not a member of the Revolu- 
tionary organization. Mr. Breslin's brothers were all in the movement, 
but he always laughingly put aside any questions when hinted to as to 
joining. He did not, as he afterward expressed it, believe there was any 
powerful organization in existence, seriously determined to struggle for 
Irish freedom. Mr. Breslin, who was hospital steward in the prison, 
had the freedom of moving about through the interior, and on the arrival 
of a prisoner of any importance Mr. Breslin would invariably come down 
to have a look at him before he was sent to his cell. On the Saturday 
morning that Stephens was arrested, Mr. Breslin came down to see 
him, and getting close beside Mr. Byrne, who was on duty as warder, 
they mutually condemned the cowardly action of Stephens and his 
friends in surrendering without firing a shot. At this time there was 
confined in Richmond Bridewell a prisoner awaiting trial for " high 
treason," Captain Underwood O'Connell, an officer in the 99th N. G. 
S. N. Y., Colonel John O'Mahony's regiment. Captain O'Connell was 
arrested at Queenstown on landing from America, and several Irish 
official documents were found upon his person. The day after Stephens' 
arrest Captain O'Connell felt ill and rang the bell for the warder and 
asked to see a physician. As there was none in the prison, Mr. Breslin, 



98 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

being hospital steward, came to see him, when he asked O'Connell to 
accompany him to the apothecary's room. He began a conversation 
with O'Connell, and curious to learn what the Captain's opinions were of 
Stephens, he inquired concerning their new prisoner. Was he any good ? 
O'Connell, who was a sincere believer in Stephens at that time, replied 
with enthusiasm, " He is worth twenty thousand men for the cause." 

"If he is so great a man," said Breslin, " he ought to be released. 
" Released ? " replied O'Connell, " why you know that is impossible." The 
Captain returned to his cell. Although this interview had not the most 
remote connection with Stephens' subsequent escape, it raised the 
C. O. I. R. a little higher in the estimation of Breslin. 

That Monday night, November 20, John Ryan brought Daniel Byrne to 
Colonel Kelly's lodgings, 19 Grantham Street, where he met General Ker- 
win and Colonel Thos. J. Kelly, and some further conversation about get- 
ting James Stephens out of Richmond Bridewell was entered into. Colonel 
Kelly, who had been acting as Stephens' secretary and transacting the 
principal business for the C. O. I. R., undertook the outside management 
of Stephens' release. He did not see any obstacle to Byrnes' success in the 
undertaking provided he was supplied with duplicate keys, as the originals 
were always brought to the governor's room after locking up time, and 
Byrne was the only officer on duty at night. At this time neither Colonel 
Kelly nor General Kerwin knew anything of Mr. Breslin, and not being a 
member of the organization Byrne did not know what his sentiment might 
be on so important a question. . Ryan hinted at Byrne getting any money 
required, not knowing General Kerwin's offer. Byrne replied that all the 
money in the Bank of Ireland would not release Stephens, but he would 
do it for love of his country. When leaving Colonel Kelly's lodgings that 
night, Byrne received a note from Kelly to bring in to Stephens. This 
was the first communication brought to the C. O. I. R. from the outside. In 
the meantime Mr. John Breslin, unaware of Byrne's movements or of 
his meeting with the Irish leaders, was sent for by his brothers, Neil and 
Michael, and urged to aid in releasing Stephens from the prison. Their 
patriotic brother agreed at once to the suggestion ; he freely consented to 
do his best. He remembered he could get the aid of Daniel Byrne to 
further the escape. John Breslin knew that Byrne was an I. R. B. 
member, as he had approached him to join. 

The consent of John Breslin to help in the proposed rescue was com- 
municated to headquarters and an appointment made for Colonel Kelly 
to meet him. When Byrne went on duty that Monday night he deliv- 
ered to Stephens the dispatch from Kelly. Soon after Breslin came to 
the night watchman and broached the subject of releasing the C. O. I. R. ; 
then Byrne learned for the first time that he would have his assistance in 
the proposed rescue. 

When the news of Stephens' arrest reached the Military Council they 
held a meeting. At this meeting General Millen, by virtue of his rank 
as full general, assumed the right to succeed Stephens, and to preside 
over the council ; as he expressed it, he " outranked them all " ; his col- 
leagues acquiesced. There were more important duties before them than 
trumpery matters of precedence. 

A message was sent from the council in to Stephens and a letter to 
his wife, also a dispatch from General Millen informing the imprisoned 
chief of Millen's position of authority, that worthy general guaranteeing 
to keep the organization well in hand if necessary for the next six 
months. Mr. Millen had offended the chief in his weak point. The 
idea that anyone could be capable of succeeding the indispensable C. O. 
I. R. was too presumptuous. 

Mr. Stephens' dignity was ruffled. In an angry mood he sent out a 



A RETROSPECT. 99 

dispatch by John Breslin, ordering Colonel Kelly for the present to 
assume the reins of government, and for Millen to be sent back forthwith 
to New York, with instructions to report at headquarters there, and to 
return to Ireland with the first expedition leaving the United States 
(the old delusion). Commenting on General Millen's promise to hold the 
organization in Ireland for six months, the C. O. I. R. said the Archangel 
Gabriel could not do so. It is a pity that Stephens did not think of this 
later on ; but possibly he considered himself greater than the Archangel. 

James Stephens at this time had set for his model the First Consul. 
His dispatches to his officers were written in the commanding style of 
that historic personage, and with the trifling drawback of not using 
revolvers or any death-dealing instruments, — as witness the tameness of 
his arrest in Fairfield House, — he tried to follow in the pathway of his 
illustrious predecessor in the world's history. 

The gallant General Millen obeyed the orders of his chief, like a true 
soldier. 

General Kerwin thus describes the action of the council, after 
Stephens' arrest. 

" A meeting was at once ordered and steps taken to ' fill up the 
gap.' This was one of Mr. Stephens' great boasts, that no matter how 
many men might be removed, there were others to step in and take 
their places. Acting in this spirit, the council organized a Provisional 
Directory, and wrote a very courteous letter to Mrs. Stephens express- 
ive of sympathy, and asking her to transfer to the council any 
documents that might be of use, and whatever money she had on hand 
belonging to the public fund. No reply was received to this letter, but 
soon, through the medium of friends employed in Richmond Bridewell, 
a correspondence was opened with Mr. Stephens. The first use he made 
of this established line of communication was to send out a letter banish- 
ing the president of the council from the country. This was a damper 
on the zeal of the council. They were soon made to realize that the 
'filling up the gap,' theory had no reference to the C. O. I. R. No 
man on earth could ' fill the gap ' caused by his removal ! " 

On Tuesday, November 14, Mr. James Stephens was brought before 
Mr. Stronge, the police magistrate, on remand, and committed back to 
Richmond Bridewell for trial. On being asked by Mr. Stronge if he wished 
to make any statement, Mr. Stephens delivered the following manly 
reply : " I feel bound to say in justification, or rather with a view of 
my own reputation, that I have employed no attorney or lawyer in this 
case, and that I mean to employ none ; because in making a plea of any 
kind or filing any defense — I am not particularly well up in these legal 
terms — I should be recognizing British law in Ireland. Now I deliber- 
ately and conscientiously repudiate the existence of that law in Ireland — 
its right or even its existence. I repudiate the right of its existence in 
Ireland. I defy and despise. any punishment it can inflict upon me. I 
have spoken." 

This action of James Stephens was worthy the course that an Irish 
Nationalist should pursue when a prisoner in the hands of the enemy. 
It was a great redeeming feature in Stephens' conduct, which previous to 
his arrest appeared so bombastic. This action in the dock should be 
repeated by every Irishman who might have the misfortune to fall into 
their hands. Repudiate their mock trials, because, by making a defense, 
and engaging counsel, the Revolutionary soldier at once stultifies him- 
self and his comrades, and recognizes British law. This lesson cannot 
be too often impressed upon men who believe in making war upon Ire- 
land's foe ; they should recollect that they are prisoners of war, to whom 
the enemy will show no mercy — and in thus acting from his standpoint 



loo THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

he thinks he is quite right in not doing so ; they must be prepared to 
face the consequences with manly fortitude, giving no triumph to 
the enemy by their conduct. But above all they should never allow 
themselves to be arrested without offering resistance — not silly strug- 
gles, but the shooting down of the enemy's officials who attempt to 
capture them, even if they have to mount the scaffold. They should 
remember that they are soldiers engaged in war, and the gallows in Ire- 
land and for Irishmen is Britain's war implement. They must at all 
times be prepared to risk their lives, and lose them if necessary in the 
cause they have espoused. Instead of this, even among the best and 
bravest, witnesses for the defense are put forward, and all the silly formula 
of a trial is carried on as if they had committed a criminal offense against 
society. It very often may occur that brave men may be surprised and 
cannot offer resistance ; sensible people understand this, but no lesson 
should be more impressed upon Irish revolutionists than that they are 
engaged in making war, and that war is a struggle to the very death. If 
they are not prepared to face this death they should stand aside and not 
heap ridicule upon a sacred cause for which generations of brave men 
fought and died. As a rule the men would follow this course if they 
were properly instructed ; it is the effect of false teaching and false 
policy which induces them to put trust in alibis and humiliating legal 
defenses. 

The Russian organ Journal de St. Petersbourg thus commented on 
the then Irish situation : 

" The analogy is so striking, the circumstances are so identical, with 
a few differences of degree in the foreign interference, that we believe it 
will be necessary to remind Russian readers of the fact that it is Ireland 
in 1865 and not Poland in 1863 that is being spoken of." 

The Russian journal, when speaking of foreign interference, alludes 
to the famous dispatch of Earl Russell during the insurrection in Poland, 
which insurrection was one of the waves from the war for Italian inde- 
pendence. England, brutal and hypocritical, the persecutor of Ireland 
and India, tried to pose before the world as the lover of freedom and the 
sympathizer of struggling Poland. 

Colonel Kelly hastened his preparations for the rescue of Mr. Stephens. 
Mr. John Breslin and Mr. Daniel Byrne had promised him an impression 
in wax of the keys of the cell and corridor where Stephens was confined, 
They went together to buy the wax, but for many reasons sent a mes- 
senger to make the purchase. The young man they sent, a Mr. Durkin, 
was a member of the organization, well known to Mr. Byrne. He pur- 
chased the wax in Dr. Woodruff's of Bagot Street ; they paid for it out of 
their own pockets, the organization not expending one shilling in the 
transaction. Mr. Byrne was invaluable-in aiding the escape. As night 
watchman and warder he had access to the keys, which Mr. Breslin as 
hospital steward had no facilities to procure. Byrne got the keys, took an 
impression in wax with Mr. Breslin's aid, and Mr. Breslin brought these 
wax materials and gave to Colonel Kelly, who took them to a skillful lock- 
smith, one of the members of the organization, who made from the impres- 
sions duplicate keys. This man's name cannot be given, as he still lives 
beneath the enemy's flag and may yet be useful in the service of his 
country. 

The keys when made were given to Breslin, who took them inside. 
And now Colonel Kelly had to complete his arrangements ; it was neces- 
sary to have some safe retreat to bring the C. O. I. R. to after the 
escape, as convenient to the prison as possible, and in the event of pur- 
suit more than one retreat might be found important. The next necessity 
was to procure a permanent home for Stephens, where he could reside 



A RETROSPECT. 101 

until the beginning of the fight. For it was on the clear and definite 
understanding that he would order a general insurrection at once and as 
soon as some definite military plan had been decided upon, that he was 
taken out of prison. The plan highly approved of was that of the Mili- 
tary Council already mentioned, but this should be somewhat altered, as 
the Exhibition having closed, the same pretext for bringing the men to 
Dublin was not available, and they would be compelled to come up in not 
so remarkable a manner as to numbers. In Dublin at the close of 
1865 were a very large number of men, deserters from the British Army 
and men who belonged to volunteer regiments in Britain. These came 
over without any orders, paying their own expenses and trying to live 
under severe conditions, all waiting for the expected signal to take up 
arms for the green banner of old Ireland. These men endured great 
hardships, but did so of their own volition ; love of country and anxiety 
to take part in the coming revolutionary war more than compensated 
them for present ills. There resided at that time in Dublin a widow 
and her daughter, Mrs. Butler and Miss Sarah Jane Butler. Their 
dwelling was in 30 Kildare Street, where they had a beautiful furnished 
house in that quiet and respectable neighborhood, where British officials 
would never dream a Fenian chieftain could find a home. Mrs. Butler 
was an amiable Irish lady of quiet, unobtrusive character, loving her 
country as Irish women do, but having no revolutionary predilections ; 
neither had she any antipathies, but left these affairs to men and lived a 
quiet domestic life. Miss Sarah Jane Butler, on the contrary, was a most 
enthusiastic Irish patriot. Miss Butler was a young lady, a little below 
the medium height, with beautiful dreamy violet eyes, a white and 
regular set of teeth, which flashed out from lips of vermillion ; a voice, one 
of the most musical we have ever heard from woman. She had that 
deliciously sweet accent which belongs to the cultured of Irish women, and 
more especially to some ears, the pleasing tones of a Dublin gentlewoman. 
A shower of brown ringlets covered a shapely head, curls which hung in 
profusion on her neck and shoulders. Miss Butler was an accomplished 
poetess, and many beautiful effusions appeared from time to time from 
her pen in the columns of the Irish National press. She had no male re- 
lations in Dublin and no association of any kind at that time with revo- 
lutionists. So that Mrs. Butler's home would be a haven of rest for the 
C. O. I. R. Among the circle of Mrs. and Miss Butler's friends were, 
however, two revolutionists, for Dublin society at that time was honey- 
comed with patriots of the physical force school — what a falling off is 
there to-day ! One of these was an artist of no mean abilities. He 
came of a patriotic family ; his father and his elder brother, John, had 
been enthusiastic patriots in 1848, both then dead. Nicholas Walsh was 
one of the Dublin " centres." He was a man of intellectual ability, thought- 
ful and resolute, who would have made a splendid officer if Ireland had 
taken the field. His mother was a woman of remarkable endowment — 
the very ideal of the Spartan mother, a firm believer in Irish independ- 
ence. Mrs. Walsh had many trials to undergo through her son's con- 
nection with the Irish cause, but she bore them with dignity and fortitude. 
Nicholas Walsh had one sister. She was a friend and companion of 
Miss Butler. Cecilia Walsh was about the same build as her lady friend, 
but a trifle less in stature. She had the appearance of a Spanish lady — 
dark, short curly hair, which she wore in a foreign style ; a pale classic 
face that was lit up by dark eyes, now and then full of mischief and 
satire, but more often serious and thoughtful. She was a very exten- 
sively read young lady. She was full of repartee, and was the life of a 
social group. Many of Nicholas Walsh's friends enjoyed the good- 
humored raillery of the artist's pretty sister. She was the very imper- 



102 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

sonation of a conspirator and was a most valuable assistant to Colonel 
Kelly and Stephens. 

Nicholas Walsh communicated with Colonel Kelly, and after negotiat- 
ing with Mrs. Butler, she consented to keep Stephens if rescued. In 
this decision Miss Butler had a great deal to do. Mr. Walsh made a stipu- 
lation with Colonel Kelly that on no account was Mrs. Stephens or any 
member of her family to be permitted to go to Mrs. Butler's, which Kelly 
promised to get as a consent from Stephens. It was said at the time that 
the " old man," as Stephens was sometimes called, had given this promise. 
Rightly or wrongly Mrs. Stephens' family were looked upon with suspi- 
cion by the men of the organization ; there was no reason for this at that 
time, but subsequent events proved their correctness ; in one instance 
George Hopper, Stephens' brother-in-law, having in a cowardly manner 
pleaded guilty when on trial. This was a triumph for the enemy, who 
wished to sow the seeds of suspicion against Stephens. At length the 
night came, when the startling event of that period was to come off. 
Colonel Kelly had selected twelve men to be present in the event of any 
resistance being offered. He had many volunteers, the Military Council 
having offered their services ; but Colonel Kelly rightly refused the aid 
of any of the prominent men in Dublin, as their arrest or death in a strug- 
gle which might possibly occur would more seriously effect the organiza- 
tion. It was absolutely necessary that he should be present himself, as no 
one knew his arrangements, which he kept locked in his own breast. He 
had prepared six different places of retreat at as convenient a distance as 
possible to one another. All of these people were pledged to absolute 
secrecy, and did not know but that their home was the only retreat en- 
gaged for Mr. Stephens. Colonel Kelly's orders were, that the I. R. B. 
man whose house was selected should take up his position as sentinel at 
his street door, which was to be kept all night unbolted and unlocked, in 
such a way that a person rushing by could push the door in easily, and if 
closely pursued he might be able to effect an egress through the back and 
make for another of their rendezvous, the sentinel to keep all pursuers 
parleying at the front door. These I. R. B. sentinels were ordered to take 
up their positions at the street door of their homes from two o'clock until 
daybreak. Five of these sentinels must have a vivid recollection of that 
night, for each one, unconscious there was another retreat, was anxiously 
looking for the C. O. I. R. These men were told to supply themselves 
with torn white paper, which they were to scatter in handfuls before their 
homes as soon as they went on duty, Colonel Kelly's reason for this was 
that a man rushing along in the dark could make no mistake as to the 
house. 

Every needful preparation that could make the rescue successful was 
carried out by Colonel Kelly, who proved himself in this as in other mat- 
ters a brainy and competent revolutionist. He ordered the Fenian lock- 
smith to procure a rope of the requisite length and have it knotted so that 
the C. O. I. R. could climb the outer prison wall. This rope was brought 
there that night coiled round the body of the locksmith. 

The night selected for the rescue was Friday night, November 24, 
1865, and as if the heavens had joined in the undertaking a more fortu- 
nate night could not be chosen. It rained in torrents and stormed, a cold 
wintry blast coming with fierce gusts which nearly took the belated way- 
farer off his feet. All who could stay at home remained beneath the 
shelter of a roof that night. Those who knew that the escape was in 
progress, and these were few, sat with anxious, tumultuous feelings, listen- 
ing to the weird wintry blasts that moaned and whistled out of doors. 

The hour fixed for the escape was 2 a. m. Nearing that time Colonel 
Kelly appeared on the scene accompanied by the Fenian locksmith, 



A RETROSPECT. 103 

who acted as his guide. The Colonel ordered the men to scatter in 
small groups by the prison walls, ready to concentrate at a given signal. 
Three of these he selected to stand close by the place where Stephens' 
signal from inside was expected. Colonel Kelly accompanied by the 
locksmith, then proceeded to reconnoiter. About halfway up Love Lane 
he met a policeman, who was sauntering along in the usual manner, no 
doubt cursing his fate for being compelled to remain out of doors such 
a tempestuous night. Running close by the prison was a low ditch, 
which the men crossed and remained near. All were armed and if neces- 
sary prepared to shoot. 

Meanwhile, inside the prison Daniel Byrne and John Breslin were 
ready for their most important share in the work. Daniel Byrne was on 
duty that night as watchman, to guard the prisoners and report any- 
thing irregular to the governor, hence he held a most important share 
in the escape from the inside. Mr. Breslin, as hospital steward, had 
no duties in the internal discipline of the prison, and without the assist- 
ance or connivance of the night watchman could not have accomplished 
his task. Byrne, on the other hand, as the official alone in charge, could 
have performed this duty if necessity compelled it unaided. 

Mr. Byrne also took upon himself the whole responsibility and danger, 
as it was his duty to guard the prisoners, and he knew that he would be 
arrested as a matter of course the next day. On the other hand, Mr. 
Breslin was not suspected of being out of his room that night, and as 
hospital steward escaped all suspicion. 

Daniel Byrne opened the corridor and unlocked the cell, letting out 
as quietly as possible the C. O. I. R. The cell of James Stephens 
and that of Charles Kickham were in the same row. The gover- 
nor, Dominick Marquez, had placed a convict criminal prisoner, who 
was instructed to give an alarm if anything unusual was heard by him 
in either cell. He gave as an explanation next day that he was 
frightened and had a presentiment of approaching danger. Byrne brought 
Stephens down the flight of steps leading from the corridor and led him 
into the yard, where Breslin was waiting their arrival. The ladder 
which they used in the prison to light the lamps they found too short 
to reach the top of the inner wall. So Byrne brought two tables from 
the dining hall, and with Breslin's aid they were placed one upon the 
other, and the ladder placed on top of the upper table. Breslin handed 
Stephens a loaded revolver, fearing there might be a guard between 
the inner and outer wall. Stephens took the revolver mechanically and 
mounted the tables, then on to the ladder and so to the top of the 
inner wall. When he reached the top of the wall Stephens threw down 
the revolver to Breslin, saying, "I have no use for this." The thought 
flashed at once on Breslin that the great C. O. I. R. was not a brave 
man. Meanwhile outside the prison wall the watchers kept pursuing 
their weary rounds in the drenching rain. The men near the place where 
Stephens was expected were eagerly listening for the signal that the 
C. O. I. R. was to give them of his presence. Two o'clock struck, and 
every minute seemed an hour ; the half-hour chimed by the distant 
clocks, and now weeks seemed to intervene, so great was the suspense 
to Kelly and the locksmith, moving about in the drenching rain, which 
pierced every crevice driven along by the force of the sudden gusts. 
Three o'clock pealed out on the stormy air. The men began asking 
each other " Will he come ? " Some thought there was a hitch inside. In 
the midst of these thoughts a shower of gravel fell among them. Quick 
as lightning the rope was uncoiled and flung across the outer wall. 
Stephens, who was in the garden between the walls, quickly seized the 
rope and by the aid of the knots hauled himself up to the top of the 



104 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

outward wall ; from there he dropped into the arms of Colonel Kelly 
and the men who were waiting outside. Colonel Kelly did not lose an 
instant of time ; he ordered the twelve guards to scatter, each taking a 
different direction into the city, and accompanied by Stephens he reached 
one of the six rendezvous, pushing Stephens inside, as the man who 
was on watch knew him well, and greatly relieved in mind, Colonel 
Kelly, with a load of anxiety removed, made for his home at 19 Grantham 
Street. He was not only drenched by the rain, but his clothing was 
all besmeared with mud crossing the low ditch near the prison. In the 
meantime John. Breslin retired to his quarters in Richmond Bridewell, 
where he was supposed to be asleep. One hour after Stephens got 
away, and when he knew that he must be safe somewhere, Daniel Byrne 
gave the alarm. This was the ordeal which Byrne, like a brave man, 
knew he had to face, and while all connected with this escape are 
deserving of a tribute of gratitude from Irishmen — for they were not sup- 
posed to forecast Stephens' future conduct — the men who stand out 
more prominently in the affair are in the first instance Captain John 
Kirwan,and in the management of the escape Daniel Byrne and Colonel 
Thomas J. Kelly. 

Byrne was arrested by the enraged enemy, who tried every possible way 
to get evidence against him, but failed. He compelled them to pay him 
what salary they owed him and, with the financial assistance of a devoted 
brother, he left for this country. Not one penny would he take from the 
organization, and although the busy tongue of calumny keeps on unceas- 
ingly to slander men who ever did anything for Ireland, it circulated false 
stories about Mr. Breslin and Mr. Byrne. Not one penny did either 
receive in connection with Stephens' escape. Both these Irish patriots, 
Breslin and Byrne, whatever they were inclined to spend for the cause, 
would not touch any of its funds. Mr. Breslin, who was never suspected, 
as he had no duties to do in connection with prison discipline, as already 
mentioned, remained on in the prison, but the enemy removed all the 
Irish prisoners to Kilmainham, fearing another rescue. On the arrest of 
Mr. Breslin's youngest brother, Patrick, suspicion began to fall on all the 
family, so he left and came to this country. 

Next morning all was excitement in Dublin. The British enemy was 
confounded. The strongest prison in Dublin was no protection against the 
dreadful Fenians. Great was the joy among the Irish people ; they could 
not express it, but jokingly accused one another in the public streets of 
being the culprit who let Stephens out. The Provincialists, who numbered 
at that time a very small portion of the people, were astounded ; it was the 
first act which told them of the power of the organization. They were, 
strange to say, more opposed to the active party than even the Orangemen. 
They spread abroad the story that Stephens was let out by the government, 
and every plausible sneer they could invent they bestowed upon the patriots, 
whom they called the shoeless and hatless. An absurd statement, for the 
very low stratum of Irish society never joined these movements ; their 
abject poverty had crushed out all manly spirit of resistance. Revolu- 
tionists would never dream of looking in that direction for recruits. The 
Dublin Freeman, then as now the leading daily organ of the Provincial- 
ists and anti-Irish Republicans, in its editorials in the edition of Saturday, 
November 25, 1865, the morning of the escape, observes. 

" If the result, on full inquiry, should lead to the detection of the 
guilty person, we hope that the utmost rigor of the law will be exercised in 
order to make an example that will warn others from the perpetration of 
similar acts of criminal treachery. We ask the government — we ask those 
who for the vile purpose of party have sneered at the arrests and prose- 
cutions as needless efforts — is there no indication in the escape of 




DANIEL BYRNE. 

In the uniform of the Papal Army. Inside leader of the rescue of James Stephens 

from Kilmainham prison. 



A RETROSPECT. 105 

Stephens of the depth and breadth of the ramifications of this con- 
spiracy ? " 

Then, as in most Irish troubles of recent years, Mr. Gladstone was in 
power. Earl Russell was the Premier of a Liberal English government., 
and the " Grand Old Man " was Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of 
the House of Commons. That anything should disturb the happiness of 
the Liberal party was a source of trouble to these Provincialists, and this 
article from their organ shows how unpatriotic they were then, as they are 
to-day (1887). General Kerwin thus describes the escape of Stephens: 
" On the night of the 24th of November, only two weeks after his arrest, 
the plans were put into execution, and on the 25th, the day following, the 
city was doubly electrified with the startling cry : ' Stephens has escaped ! 
Stephens has escaped ! ' A look of confusion, bordering on horror, was 
on the face of every official of the government. One of their strongest 
bastilles had been invaded, and the chief conspirator against the peace 
of Her Majesty's realm actually carried off under their very noses I 
Let it be here recorded, to the honor of the prison officers engaged in 
this daring enterprise, that they declined to accept every offer of money, 
or to fly from the country to save themselves from prosecution." 

The British gnashed their teeth with rage. Lord Wodehouse, since 
Earl Kimberley, was Britain's Lord Lieutenant at the time. He issued a 
proclamation offering ^"1000 for his recapture, and ^300 for any private 
information ; but there was not gold enough in the British treasury to 
purchase Stephens' betrayal. The following description was published 
in the Hue and Cry of Stephens' appearance : "James Stephens, about 
forty-two years of age, five feet seven inches high, stout make, broad 
high shoulders, very light active appearance ; fair hair, bald all round 
top of the head ; wears all his beard, which is sandy, slightly tinged with 
gray, rather long under the chin, but slight from the jaw, approaching 
the ears ; broad forehead, tender eyes, which defect seems to be constitu- 
tional, and has a peculiar habit of closing the left eye when speaking ; 
high cheek-bones and rather good-looking contour; hands and feet 
rather small and well formed, and he generally dresses in black clothes." 

But reward and description were in vain. Stephens was in Dublin in 
control of the revolutionary movement, and all the power of the British 
enemy could not effect his recapture. The Irish soldiers in the barracks 
as they cleaned their accouterments whistled the Irish air called the 
" Shan Van Voght," or " The Little Old Woman," meaning gossip, or its 
nearest English equivalent, " So the Story Goes." The boys in Dublin 
and all over Ireland were singing a new version of this popular ballad 
composed on the escape of Stephens, a rather humorous production j 
two stanzas are given : 

Perhaps you'd like to know, 

Said the Shan Van Voght, 
Which way did Stephens go, 

Said the Shan Van Voght, 
When from Richmond snug and tight 
He walked safely out of sight, 
And never said good-night, 

Said the Shan Van Voght. 

They thought it very hard, 

Said the Shan Van Voght, 
That he did not leave his card, 

Said the Shan Van Voght, 
At Mr. Lawson's gate. 
Who'd much rather he did wait 
And see him in full state, 

Said the Shan Van Voght. 



106 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The Mr. Lawson here spoken of was one of the prosecuting Crown 
lawyers, since a judge, whose name cropped up years after. The Irish 
have long memories. Mr. Lawson's name will appear later on in this 
history. 

Colonel Kelly's clothing was sent up to him nicely brushed the morn- 
ing after the escape ; the news had spread everywhere, and when it 
reached the ear of Colonel Kelly's landlady, taken in connection with 
the state of his clothing, confirmed that good lady in her suspicions as 
to her lodger. Colonel Kelly was perfectly safe ; he found, as he would 
have found in most houses there in Dublin, perfect accord and sympathy 
for the success of the cause. The next proceeding of importance was 
to remove Stephens from his temporary concealment to Mrs. Butler's. 
Kelly had established an ingenious plan of hiring cars in Dublin. The 
system he employed was to send one of his men to a car stand or hazard 
as they are called, who drove to some point or other in the city and 
dismissed the car. The driver on his return to his stand was usually met 
and hailed by the colonel or his messenger, a youth at that time about 
seventeen years old, but although young a most useful assistant for 
Colonel Kelly. By taking a cab or car in this manner their movements 
could not easily be traced. Miss Walsh was selected as the safest escort 
James Stephens could have to conduct him to his retreat in Mrs. Butler's. 
Kelly's messenger, the youth spoken of, brought Stephens from the house 
where he was concealed since the night of the escape from Richmond. 
Miss Walsh met him as pre-arranged ; a cab passing to its stand was 
engaged ; this cab left the young lady and the C. O. I. R. at the head of 
Kildare Street on Stephen's Green ; they then walked down and entered 
Mrs. Butler's home, and the Fenian chief found himself in perfect safety. 
An armed guard followed at a distance and kept the C. O. I. R. in view until 
he was comfortably housed. When Colonel Kelly found it necessary to 
communicate with his chief, he either handed his messenger or Miss 
Walsh a dispatch written on a small piece of thin paper which could 
easily be swallowed. The colonel's dispatch was first brought to Synge 
Street, Miss Walsh's home, to break the direct communication between 
Kelly's lodgings in Grantham Street and the C. O. I. R.'s in Kildare Street. 

Stephens, in violation of his promise, communicated with his wife. 
That lady, disguising herself, as she thought, in a huge bonnet, but which 
was remarkable enough to attract attention, presented herself at Mrs. 
Butler's ; there was no help but to admit her. Colonel Kelly was annoyed 
and Nicholas Walsh indignant. Stephens explained that his wife knew 
what to cook for him, as his health was by no means robust, owing to his 
enforced confinement. All the time this sybarite was enjoying luxuries, 
men in Dublin were suffering hardships, who had come there from Britain 
anxious to commence the fight. 

The political trials caused a great stir in the city and excited the 
public mind. John O'Leary, one of the principal captures made at that 
time, in his speech from the dock, gave an indignant denial that he was 
guilty of treason. He said : "I have been found guilty of treason or of 
treason felony. Treason is a foul crime. The poet Dante consigns 
traitors to, I believe, the ninth circle of hell ; but what kind of traitors? 
Traitors against the king, against country, against friends, and against 
benefactors. England is not my country! I have betrayed no friend, 
no benefactor. Sydney and Emmet were legal traitors. Jeffreys was a 
loyal man ; so was Norbury. I leave the latter there." 

One of the Dublin papers remarked upon this speech of Mr. O'Leary's : 
" Here is the point of the whole question : England is not our country. 
Treason to England has often been true loyalty to Ireland. England 
claims allegiance from Irishmen ; but no power has yet been able to root 



A RETROSPECT. 107 

out of their hearts the conclusion that their own country has the best 
claim upon that feeling. England is not our country. She rules us by 
brute force ; she makes laws for us without our consent, she taxes us 
beyond our capacities; she consigns our countrymen to the gibbet and 
the prison for endeavoring to resist her authority ; but all this does not 
alter the broad merits of the case ; the people of Ireland will not believe 
that in conspiring against England John O'Leary was committing treason 
against his country; they well know that it is not treason to Ireland, to 
Irish interests, or to Irish honor ; that England punishes by death and 
imprisonment, and in the tortures and indignities to which she is now 
subjecting him and other Irish gentlemen, they will see and feel only 
another pressure put upon their own hearts, another outrage on rights 
and principles which the Irish nation has at all times and at every cost 
struggled to assert, and which she is not now about to abandon." 

There was one remarkably bold and daring prisoner who, like James 
Stephens, refused to be represented in the enemy's court house by any 
lawyer owing allegiance to the invader and his laws. This brave man 
was Mr. Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa. He bearded the renegade Pro- 
vincialist Keogh, who presided over these trials, and who was the enemy's 
useful tool. The Irish People, the Nationalist organ, attacked this vile 
instrument of tyranny, Keogh, and the enemy's prosecuting counsel 
put in as testimony against the patriots their suppressed organ, using 
several letters and articles from this paper to influence the packed Irish 
rebels, miscalled jurymen, to find a verdict (which was a foregone conclu- 
sion when they entered the jury box) in favor of the foreign invaders and 
against the Irish patriots. Mr. O'Donovan Rossa, taking advantage of 
this technicality, claimed the right to read what passages he wished from 
the columns of the Irish People, as the paper was given in evidence. He 
selected all the paragraphs which exposed Keogh's infamy, and the rene- 
gade, sitting on the British Bench, decorated in all the paraphernalia of 
wig and furred gown, had to sit there and hear the man, who was elevated 
by the dignity of truth to the position of his judge, lay bare, as it were 
with a scalpel knife, all the public treachery and perjury by which this 
infamous man climbed to office in the ranks of his country's enemies. 
Keogh sat there with pale face as the rich Southern tones of Rossa rang 
out, reading the condemnation of this perjured wretch from the columns 
of the National journal. The resonant sounds of Mr. O'Donovan Rossa's 
voice seemed like a death knell in the ears of the guilty man, who cowered 
and winced when, as Rossa's voice rang out, reading one special passage, 
the crime-stained judge shuddered as if the doom of blasphemy was 
about to be hurled upon his wicked head. Belshazzar in the banquet 
hall, or Macbeth before the bloody ghost of Banquo, could not have 
worn a more fearful look of horror. The eyes grew pale and glassy and 
appeared to protrude from the sockets as \i influenced by some super- 
natural dread ; his face changed from purple to the hue of death alter- 
nately, and the twitching of his hands in nervous fright appalled the 
beholders. Turning with hysteric motion to his brother judge, Fitzgerald, 
he addressed him in a hurried manner and the court rose. The departure 
of Keogh in such a frightened, abrupt way, betrayed to everyone in court 
the workings of a guilty conscience. The court at this remarkable junc- 
ture arose for refreshments. It was the player's scene from Hamlet, re- 
produced in the capital of a warring nation struggling for life in the 
grasp of a murderous foe. 

Keogh's departure was so like the frightened leavetaking of King 
Claudius in the play scene that Rossa might have exclaimed somewhat 
like Hamlet, " My words, my words have touched the conscience of this 
murderous and perjured judge !" What words were they that so paral- 



108 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

yzed Keogh and caused such a scene in court ? Rossa, reading from the 
National paper, accused Keogh to his face with the deliberate and cold- 
blooded effort to convict the brothers McCormick of the crime of mur- 
der ; of his partisan attitude during the trial, although sitting on the bench ; 
of his bitter and malicious action in suppressing every iota of evidence in 
their favor, and finally his deliberate charge to a packed jury to find a 
verdict of guilty — his demoniac joy and fierce attack, when with a scowl 
of hatred he put on the black cap and sentenced these young men to die 
on the scaffold. In vain they attempted to protest their innocence. 
Keogh fully approved of the verdict, which was mainly of his own pro- 
curing. Pitiful humanity — even West Britishers — revolted at this immoral 
and hideous trial. An attempt was made to save these young men's lives, 
but this was stopped by Keogh's action. The monster was ravenous for 
the young McCormicks' lives and he got his brutal wish. They were hanged 
protesting their innocence on the scaffold. The quicklime had scarcely 
destroyed their bodies in their uncoffined graves inside the jail, when their 
innocence was made apparent as noonday^ But who could restore to life 
the murdered dead ? Who could restore their innocent young lives to the 
circle of friends and relatives from which, by a bloody engine called Brit- 
ish law, they were torn ? For the murder they were charged with was one 
of those agrarian killings, where tyrants are slain by outraged and per- 
secuted peasants ground down by poverty and degradation under alien 
laws. When Mr. O'Donovan Rossa read this statement before Keogh in 
a crowded court he winced and displayed nervousness, and a feeling of 
horror as if the ghosts of the dead McCormicks stood before him and in 
their bloody shrouds pointed at him the finger of condemnation and scorn. 
The untiring Rossa rose with the occasion, and read Keogh's own 
voluntary and most impious perjury during an election canvass at 
Athlone. Keogh called upon the Deity to witness his vow, that if re- 
turned to the British Parliament he would never accept any office from 
a British Ministry, but would work loyally with the Irish Independent 
party for the salvation of the Irish nation. To affirm his vow he called 
the Creator to register it ; holding his right arm aloft he exclaimed in 
solemn tones, " So help me God." Mr. Keogh violated this oath by ac- 
cepting a position on the Irish bench. When Mr. O'Donovan Rossa 
fiercely thundered at Keogh's public perjury the scene already described 
was enacted in Green Street Court House. 

After an interval the trial was resumed ; the spectators could easily 
see that Keogh had nerved himself with stimulants to brace the ordeal 
he knew he had to undergo. 

The dauntless prisoner re-commenced the attack, reading from the 
volumes of the paper, interspersed now and again with a manly address 
to the jury. Had these things in the shape of men held within their souls 
a single spark of manliness, or a shadow of love and respect for their 
motherland, they would have died in the court house before giving the 
enemy a verdict of guilty. But these craven traitors were curs dropped 
in a lion's den. The hours of the afternoon wore on and Rossa con- 
tinued his attack on the foreign criminals that style themselves Govern- 
ment in Ireland, and their guilty hireling Keogh. But nature cannot 
endure forever ; Rossa, growing hoarse, asked for a cup of water, which 
Keogh in hissing bitterness refused him. After a heroic and marvelous 
exhibition of endurance the dauntless Irishman closed with a peroration, 
hurling defiance on the enemy and his instrument on the bench, telling 
the jury that if they had a spark of patriotism they would never give a 
verdict to the enemy. 

Next day the trial closed. Keogh, well primed, charged the jury ; 
the stereotyped verdict was returned, and Keogh himself sentenced Mr. 



A RETROSPECT. 109 

O'Donovan Rossa. He began by stating that he knew the prisoner was 
so steeped in crime that any words of his would be of no avail to recall 
him to a sense of the enormity of his guilt. (Thank God that implanted 
such guilt in the Irish heart !) He finished up by sentencing the prisoner 
to penal servitude for the term of his natural life. This was the heaviest 
sentence passed on any of the Nationalists during that special commission, 
and Keogh's voice could not suppress his rage and bitterness when he pro- 
nounced the words that he meant to be awful and to convey terror to the 
prisoner's soul. But the undaunted Rossa turned round in the dock as he 
was being dragged away, and in tones of scathing rebuke hurled defiance 
at the renegade judge and his country's enemy. 

That night the writer vividly remembers seeing Keogh at Westland 
Row Railway Station. His face was sodden and bloated, and as he was 
led to his compartment in a first-class carriage, he was greeted, in spite of 
his police guard, with hoots and hisses by those present. A group of 
young and middle-aged men was standing by a second class carriage 
looking at the scene, belonging to a class or caste supposed by the 
enemy to be British in sentiment. From this group came the exclama- 
tion of a man who seemed to feel strongly, " I would rather be O'Dono- 
van Rossa to-night in his prison cell, than that beastly brute who sen- 
tenced him to life-long torture." And many a heart anxious for the 
coming fight silently responded " Amen." 

The year was drawing to its close when Stephens summoned a general 
council of the Irish organization — representative men from every county 
and district. Owing to the watchfulness of the enemy, Stephens was 
compelled to meet these men in batches of five and six. The council was 
held in Colonel Kelly's lodgings, 19 Grantham Street. Colonel Kelly 
had men armed with revolvers patrolling the neighboring streets, so that 
the council should not be surprised by the enemy. The officers of the 
Military Council were present, and with bombastic display which formed 
part of his character, James Stephens had before him two loaded revolvers, 
which were certainly for show, not use. As well as we can charge our 
memory this council was held on Saturday, December 30, 1865. As the 
centres came into his presence Stephens put to them this question : 
" Will you vote for fighting now or wait for three months, and for every 
rifle we have, I will guarantee there will then be eight." The men, under 
the impression that Stephens was in possession of some wondrous knowl- 
edge, consented. General Kerwin, indignant at Stephens' misleading 
question, told the C. O. I. R. plainly that there was no such hope, and 
asked Stephens to further explain himself. Although the men accepted 
the C. O. I. R.'s wish, as there appeared no alternative, they were filled 
with tears of rage at the failure. General Kerwin's indignant expose of 
Stephens' cowardly vacillation for the first time revealed to them the 
true character of their idol, who created a gigantic organization only to 
allow it to fall to pieces through recreant cowardice. Stephens accused 
General Kerwin of disheartening the men, and so this brave soldier 
became silent. All the officers present were disgusted at the pusillanimous 
conduct of the C. O. I. R. The men left the chief's presence utterly 
broken in spirit at the collapse of the struggle ; not a man who came 
there, even the humblest, but could see that all hopes of fight were over. 
General Kerwin describes this scene, where he explains his plan of insur- 
rection ; as before stated he describes two councils as one. The writer 
will never forget that December night and the hopeless state of the cause 
which the news, when heard, revealed to all. Edmond O'Donovan, who 
was with the writer part of the time in Synge Street, tried to appear 
cheerful, but he could not. Dismay was in every face. 

While Stephens was absent from his retreat in Kildare Street, attend- 



no THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

ing the council in Grantham Street, the enemy, of course unaware of the 
important conference which was held and which put back the hour of 
the struggle for at least a generation, was making a display of his forces 
through the city. He had, it is supposed, the silly idea of overawing the 
Irish by his redcoats. A regiment of soldiers marching through Nassau 
Street, preceded by a fife and drum band, caused a stir among the city 
idlers and attracted some attention, for it was not usual for troops to 
march through the city at so late an hour. Miss Butler, seized with the 
idea that Stephens was arrested, for she looked upon the C. O. I. R. as 
quite a hero, rushed from her house bareheaded and eagerly inquired 
from one of the bystanders what was the matter. The man she spoke 
to replied bitterly and recklessly,' " Only the English playing a game 
of brag, trying to frighten us with their soldiers." Miss Butler, greatly 
relieved, returned home, which was not very many doors up the street, 
fortunately attracting no attention where so many were excited. 

That night, when Stephens and Kelly were returning to Kildare Street, 
they had turned into Camden Street, when two detectives followed them 
out of curiosity. Kelly, ever on the alert, commenced a merry story of 
some imaginary jollification, which caused the detectives to leave. They 
were not in search of Christmas revelers ; little did these industrious men 
know how near they were to one thousand pounds and promotion. 

Stephens' procrastination went on. He was asked to fight at once, but 
'twas no use. At a council held in February, urged by General Kerwin, 
General Burke, and several officers present to give orders for the insurrec- 
tien, he finally refused. Next morning the enemy made a swoop and 
arrested some two or three hundred men in Dublin. Mr. Gladstone had 
introduced a bill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, which was denounced 
by John Bright (what an extraordinary change comes over English 
statesmen where Ireland is concerned !), but not waiting for any legal 
authority, the police swooped down upon the Irish officers and imprisoned 
them, twenty-four hours before the measure became law. Had they not 
done so, all of the principal officers would have left, the greater number 
having already gone away. They saw Ireland was no place for them, as 
Stephens was a dreamer and did not mean to fight. 

On the night of the arrests Edmond O'Donovan and another man 
burst in on Stephens and demanded orders to fight, as the men were 
furious at the arrests which were taking place over the country ; but 
assuming an air of injured innocence, the great C. O. I. R. said he had 
decided to go to America and unite the factions there, and he would 
return with an armed expedition. With that strange fatality which has 
followed like a curse the Irish people in their devotion to leaders, when 
these men have proved themselves both incapable and cowardly, 
Stephens' name had even then a magic influence, and the men submitted 
to his authority. 

The enemy's cruisers were searching every vessel leaving Ireland, but 
Colonel Kelly determined to try and get the C. O. I. R. out of Ireland to 
fulfill his proposed American mission. 

Dressed as sailors in pea-jackets and woolen mufflers, they drove in a 
car belonging to a member of the organization to a small fishing village, 
Skerries, a few miles from Dublin. Putting up at an inn there, they told 
the landlord they were waiting for their vessel, which was to put into 
Skerries to bring them off ; after some hours' delay the proprietor rushed 
upstairs, suspecting they were smugglers, who are usually popular in 
Ireland, and told them there was something wrong with their ship, as she 
was coming into the harbor pursued by a revenue cruiser. 

It was time to leave, which they did quickly, and returned to DubUn. 

Kelly, always ready with an expedient, hit on a plan to throw the 



A RETROSPECT. Ill 

enemy off the scent. He circulated among the men in apparent confidence 
the information that the "captain " had succeeded in escaping and was on 
his way to America. This was considered good news, as the men had 
every faith in Stephens returning with an American expedition to com- 
mence the fight, the only hope then left them. Not considering there 
was any further necessity to conceal the successful escape, and to raise 
drooping and desponding spirits, they freely communicated it to their 
comrades, and many a bon voyage and Irish good luck and God speed him 
was drunk to their supposed absent chief. The news soon reached the 
enemy and was triumphantly recorded in the National press. Kelly's 
ruse was a great success. 

The British were completely nonplussed at the way they were baffled 
by the Fenians ; they of course believed the report. The cruisers were 
removed and the coast was clear. Colonel Kelly, accompanied by a 
splendid specimen of an Irishman, John Flood, hired a small vessel to 
take them off, the captain believing- they were smugglers. Wrapped 
in pea coats and seamanlike garb, Kelly, Flood, and Stephens entered 
the vessel in the Ringsend docks and put to sea ; they were one night in 
Belfast Lough through stress of weather, but next day were landed in 
Kilmarnock, Scotland. Changing their garb they took train for London, 
putting up at the Charing Cross Hotel, and next morning taking train 
for Dover en route to Paris. On approaching Dover Colonel Kelly's 
expedients were all used up. If the enemy was anyway wise he was 
sure to have some sharp detective at Dover. John Flood came to the 
recue. He got up a discussion of an angry nature with one of the men 
at the gangway, and allowed the C. O. I. R. to slip on board unobserved. 
Flood, who lived in Birmingham, had a thorough English accent ; after a 
little explanation they went on board. Kelly had never heard anything 
so musical as the order to remove the gang plank. Thus the C. O. I. R. 
got away safely. Stephens appointed Edward Duffey, a gentleman in 
delicate health, to represent him in Ireland during his absence. Duffey 
was a noble fellow, who afterward died in prison, but he was not equal 
to the position. Nicholas Walsh, who was in Paris, at the time was indig- 
nant with Stephens for not appointing an abler man. Walsh thought 
that Kelly should have been left behind to control the home movement, 
so much shattered by Stephens' inaction and not by the enemy, for the 
number imprisoned by the foe was insignificant compared to the strength 
of the organization. Stephens, with that jealousy of brainy men, which 
has been Ireland's curse to the present hour, and which has kept from 
power and authority some of the most competent of her sons, feared that 
Kelly, if left in command at home, might undermine the influence of the 
bombastic C. O. I. R. The power of the organization as a conspiracy 
was broken ; the enemy could not be surprised, as he would have been had 
the Irish taken the field in September, 1865. The vacillation of the 
leaders had disgusted many of the most intelligent of the Nationalists; 
the morale of a few months back was destroyed. The enemy quickly 
dispatched the regiments in Ireland on foreign service, and replaced them 
with all care by regiments with few Irishmen in their ranks. With Stephens' 
departure closed the first and most hopeful period for Ireland of the 
I. R. B. struggle. Several of the best men in Dublin and other districts 
were inactive ; despair of any fight began to take the place of previous 
high hopes. 

Nicholas Walsh paid a visit of condolence to a friend's house in the 
suburbs of Dublin, toward the close of 1866. His friend's wife had lost 
her father, whom the artist had a strong friendship for. Mr. Walsh had 
taken no active part in the movement since his return from France ; he 
was devoting himself to his art. The visit was one of pure friendship, and 



112 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

had no connection with politics. The " centre " of the locality, a man 
who had been in prison under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, 
and well-known for his strong Nationalist sympathies, had been followed 
by detectives all the day, as there was talk of the approaching insurrec- 
tion. He heard that Mr. Walsh was in the town from someone who saw 
him enter the residence of his friend. When the "centre " entered they 
were at tea. His visit to that house was a most unusual proceeding. 
The owner was a man not suspected of National proclivities ; the " centre" 
was followed by the detectives. Walsh's hair was rather thin about the 
forehead, and they thought at first he was Stephens. Mr. Walsh was 
made prisoner and lodged in Mountjoy prison under the Habeas Corpus 
Suspension Act. He was in prison for some time and released to go 
abroad. He never returned to Ireland, but died in Florence some years 
after. 

Through the vacillation, vanity, and incompetency of James Stephens, 
the great revolutionary organization in Ireland, which culminated in 1865, 
was kept from taking the field. Had the Military Council's plan of cam- 
paign been adopted, and prompt action taken, the invader would have 
been involved in a bloodier struggle to defend his plunder than Ireland had 
witnessed since glorious '98. One fact stands out prominently now as 
then — the devotion, self-sacrifice, and determination of the Irish masses. 
Whenever there arises a leader capable, courageous, and honest, the 
people, if properly instructed in pure National doctrines, will be as ready 
to precipitate themselves upon the invader as they were in 1865. 

If the Irish people are ever removed from the Emerald Isle, it will 
not be by a war of independence, no matter how sanguinary should be 
the struggle ; but by the slow and certain drain which Britain's infamous 
system of warfare is sure to result in, and which she terms — Peace. 



CHAPTER VII. 

(1866-67.) 

PLAN TO SEIZE CHESTER CASTLE AND CAPTURE THIRTY THOUSAND 
STAND OF ARMS — THE KERRY RISING PART OF THE SAME PLAN. 

James Stephens' Public Promise to Fight in 1866 — The Organization Demoralized both 
in Ireland and America without Striking a Blow — Invasion of Canada Determined 
on by the Senate Wing — Battle of Ridgeway — Colonel Kelly and his Friends Deter- 
mine to Fight — The Troops in Ireland Changed — James Stephens in Hiding — 
Colonel Kelly Leaves for Ireland — Stephens Goes to France — Chester Castle — The 
City of Chester Filled with Irishmen — Captain John Kirwan at Runcorn Gap — Plan 
to Begin an Irish Insurrection — Corydon's Treason — Failure of the Enterprise — 
Determination to Begin the Fight in Ireland — McCafferty and Flood Captured on 
their Landing in Dublin — The Irish-American Officers in Liverpool — Difficulty 
of Getting at the Proposed Scene of Hostilities — Captain John Kirwan and Captain 
O'Rourke — Kirwan Demands to be Sent to Dublin — The Expedition From Gaston 
Near Liverpool — Captain John Kirwan and Irish-American Officers Set Sail for 
Ireland — Landing Effected at Killiney Strand — Night March on the Railroad Track 
— Arrive at Carrickmines — Friendly Shelter — Reach Dublin in Safety. 

When James Stephens reached the United States the Irish National 
organization in this country was divided into two wings. In Ireland 
the movement was seriously shattered and demoralized ; the failure of 
Stephens to take the field in 1865 as promised, the vacillation and inde- 
cision displayed in his conduct of affairs after his escape, had done 
what the enemy could not do — implanted a feeling of despair and 
desperation in the breasts of many of the leading patriots. 

The skilled officers of military reputation who had sacrificed their 
future prospects in America to serve their motherland, had either left- 
in disgust, or were incarcerated by the enemy in Mountjoy prison. Two 
of the Military Council, General Michael Kerwin and General Denis F. 
Burke, were among the American military prisoners captured by the foe. 

The Senate wing of the American organization decided on an inva- 
sion of Canada. This was looked upon by the home organization as 
a waste of their strength and resources, and a violation of the promises 
made to the men in the gap to aid them in a struggle with their invader 
on the sacred soil of Ireland. It was also considered by many of the 
people at home as both quixotic and unjust to invade Canada for the 
purpose of freeing Ireland, as Canada, a semi-independent province 
inhabited by a people of mixed races, never in anyway injured Ireland, 
and in no manner ever aided the British enemy in his usurpation in that 
country. Had Canada been a Crown colony under the direct control 
of the British Government (such as Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill 
would have made Ireland), there might have been some plea as an inva- 
sion of British soil, but'being a country that makes its own laws, and over 
which the British Government exercise no direct control whatever, it 
seemed to several Irishmen a peculiar idea on the part of the Senate 
leaders to decide on the invasion of the neighboring country. True, 
there was one delusive hope that the successful entry of armed Irishmen 
into the Canadian Dominion might bring on a war between Britain and 
the United States, then very much estranged over the Alabama ques- 
tion. Some people will very probably say that this was not patriotic 

"3 



H4 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

action on the part of any portion of the American people. Others will 
answer them by saying that placing Ireland out of the question, a war 
at that time between America and her ancient foe and still bitter com- 
mercial rival would have been of incalculable benefit to the United 
States ; would have restored the prestige of the American commercial 
navy on the high seas, and made the Stars and Stripes float over every 
part of the watery world. It would also have welded the North and 
South in a manner that legislation cannot so quickly do. America will 
never rest at peace from British intrigue until she asserts her commercial 
and naval supremacy on the ocean. 

Had James Stephens been the able statesman he was imagined, he 
had a splendid opportunity to harmonize the two parties, more especially 
in policy. He came to America with all the eclat of his escape from 
prison, and his no less marvelous escape from Dublin to France. On 
his arrival in New York he was waited on by a deputation of Irish 
Fenian Senators. This visit was a gracious act of courtesy on their 
part to a distinguished Irishman. These patriotic and able gentlemen 
were surprised at the hauteur and dictatorial manner with which they 
were received by the C. O. I. R., who treated them as if they were Irish 
country peasants. Instead of healing the breach, Mr. Stephens, by his 
attempt at dictatorship, widened the separation of the two wings, and 
with a two-fold determination — to dethrone the C. O. I. R. and to gain 
a foothold to declare war against the British enemy — the Senators hurried 
their preparation for Canadian invasion. There can be no doubt that 
however mistaken the policy of invading Canada may be, the Senators 
and their patriotic following were sincere and earnest in their endeavors. 
The Irish-American people responded to the call made on them ; and in 
thousands, leaving their businesses and their factories, rushed with enthu- 
siasm to take the field against the ancient foe of their race. But alas ! 
disunion and demoralization had weakened the intellects and judgment 
of the leaders, a lamentable catastrophe with men in the front of Irish 
movements, when passion and not wisdom guides the ship of state. The 
proposed invasion ended in a fiasco. After three days' grace given to 
them by a friendly Administration in Washington, the United States 
Government interfered, and the small body of Irish troops that crossed 
the border, after fighting the victorious Battle of Ridgeway, were com- 
pelled to return to the States, as they were left unsupported. 

It is no part of this history to enter into the Irish-American move- 
ment, but it must be stated that the fight at Ridgeway showed the class 
of men that crossed the Canadian border. In this engagement with the 
Dominion militia the Irish soldiers displayed the ancient valor of their 
race. They routed the red-coated foe in a short time, and so great was 
the panic among the Canadian troops that had the Irish commander any 
cavalry he would have made prisoners of war of the whole force in his 
front ; but after defeating their enemy they were compelled for lack of 
supports and supplies to retrace their steps, and the invasion was over. 

The failure of making a foothold in Canada and the evidences of bad 
management displayed by those in authority dispirited the Irish-Americans 
hitherto enthusiastic in the cause. Mr. Stephens, in desperation, seeing 
that his prestige was slipping away from him, commenced to preach 
publicly the news that as sure as that the sun shone in the heavens he 
would be fighting British troops on Irish soil before the close of that 
year, 1866. The support which Mr. Stephens expected by this extraordi- 
nary and bombastic statement was not given to him. The people were 
growing weary of all this braggart talk and no fight. Every mail brought 
news of fresh captures by the enemy in Ireland, but not the faintest 
attempt at either resistance or striking back a solitary blow at the foe. 



V'n 






3 O 


r 


2 


>-i3 


re' 


O 


tag" 


Os5 


> 






3 




2?* 




Q.C 






L 1 — I 

«5p 


2 


ft IK) 


• 3 




3 


<$ 


H 


" 


o 


ffi 




• g 


W 


r 


£• 




o 5- 
g •, 


B" 


"q 




S 


• o 




r 


w £. 




c 








=>">-, 


.<*£> 




|g£ 










<3 
£-3 


<| 




* 5" 


<~ 






: 

1 7 ' 



PLAN TO SEIZE CHESTER CASTLE. 115 

All this time those gigantic machines, the British press and British 
literature, were spreading broadcast over the American continent every 
imaginable slander they could invent against the character of the Irish 
leaders. They magnified and distorted every difference between the 
rival Irish wings. In these endeavors they were too often unfortunately 
aided by weak Irishmen, who, to air their personal grievances, forgot the 
injury done to the cause of their country by these silly and sometimes 
malicious stories. 

In Ireland demoralization had set in; that pure patriot, Edward Duffey, 
who was utterly unfitted for the duties left to his care, although as 
honest and sincere as any patriot who lives in history, proved his de- 
votion to Ireland by sealing it with the sacrifice of his life. He had not 
the capacity or strength of mind to control the warring elements that the 
C. O. I. R. left behind to his charge — the disintegrating and angry masses 
of a betrayed and once powerful organization. The enemy, fully alive to 
the importance of changing the troops in Ireland, removed their regiments 
and sent them on foreign service, replacing the disaffected troops with 
more reliable soldiers. Toward the close of 1866 Stephens' bombastic 
promises alarmed them, for Britain's stupidity as to the strength or weak- 
ness of Irish movements is a subject of contempt to every thinking Irish- 
man of any experience. Additional troops were hurried into Ireland to 
face the expected insurrection. Irishmen at home smiled at the alarm of 
the foe, and spoke to each other with bitter cynicism and sadness when 
they heard of Stephens' promises. All faith — except with a few of his 
own immediate friends — in the C. O. I. R. was completely smashed. His 
neglect of Edward Duffey was unpardonable, and confirmed in the minds 
of many the belief of Stephens' selfishness. 

To save the cause from ridicule a few brave men determined to leave 
for Ireland with the forlorn hope of trying to make an attempt at insur- 
rection there ; foremost of these, and indeed the chief of the party, was 
Colonel Thomas J. Kelly. 

At the time when Colonel Kelly and his friends determined to leave 
for Ireland to commence an insurrection, they could not possibly have 
chosen a more inopportune time. The organization was more completely 
smashed than if it had been fighting the enemy's whole army for years. 
The men were filled with disgust and contempt for the judgment of the 
leaders, more especially the C. O. I. R. Roderick Dhu's Highland fol- 
lowers never disappeared more quickly from the eyes of the Knight of 
Snowdon, than did the giant movement of one year before melt out of 
existence, or nearly so, through the cowardly temerity of James Stephens 
not fighting the invader in 1865. The enemy's action had nothing what- 
ever to do in smashing up the organization, only so far as it was permitted 
by leaders who could at a word have summoned one hundred thousand 
fighting men to hurl themselves upon the red-coated banditti of Britain. 
Colonel Kelly did not think affairs in Ireland were in so lamentable a con- 
dition, but like brave men, himself and his followers determined to make 
an effort to strike the enemy in Ireland, and come what may to try and 
wipe out the disgrace of inaction, even at the sacrifice of their lives. 

Where was the great C. O. I. R. at this crisis — the man who pledged 
himself before the world that the end of 1866 would find him in the field 
fighting British troops ? Colonel Kelly, filled with the belief that the name 
of Stephens would be a talisman by which to muster Irish troops to 
rally round the green banner, was anxious to have the chief to accompany 
them. 

At this time, when Stephens should be trying to redeem his plighted 
honor, he was discovered hiding in New York, and to further carry out 
the bombastic folly of his fancied heroism, he caused it to be printed in 



Ii6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the public press that the great C. O. I. R. had left for the theater of 
operations. 

Many earnest Irishmen believed this statement true, and others who 
were in doubt, and some who knew different, considered it good policy to 
have this misstatement published to deceive the British foe, so that 
Stephens could slip away unobserved. For not a single man, not even 
one, ever for a moment thought that James Stephens could play the part 
of poltroon before the world after his statements so publicly made. In 
vain Colonel Kelly and other friends urged on him the necessity of remov- 
ing his beard to effectually disguise himself. This modern Irish chief- 
tain prized — with the vanity of a silly girl — his ornamental hirsute append- 
age, and sooner than part with it, Ireland should accept the chances of 
the C. O. I. R.'s capture. 

Colonel Kelly and the officers were ready to depart, the colonel having 
taken passage for them all. Kelly sent John Breslin with a ticket to 
James Stephens. Mr. Stephens took it and promised Mr. Breslin he 
would be on the ship the night before sailing. These were his parting words 
to Mr. John Breslin. The men who were leaving on a forlorn hope and 
who were risking their lives to save their honor in fulfillment of Mr. 
Stephens' public pledge, were satisfied he had got quietly on board, and 
expected they would see him when the ship was out at sea. After a day 
or two, when Colonel Kelly, Mr. Breslin, and their fellow-voyagers learned 
that Mr. Stephens was not really on board — he having accepted his ticket 
to depart for the scene of approaching hostilities — according to his own 
public promise, they felt for him added contempt. In this, as in every 
incident for some time past, the C. O. I. R. displayed lamentable weak- 
ness ; he was not the man to take dangerous risks. He gave his passage 
ticket to his brother-in-law, John Hopper, who lately died at Paris. To 
several of his New York friends he stated he was left behind, but the 
would-be Irish chieftain was fast losing the sympathy of all men. A few 
generous Irishmen made up as much money as paid his passage from 
New York. But instead of leaving for Ireland or going there via France, 
even if he was to face the scaffold, Mr. Stephens sojourned in the gay 
French capital, where there were no chances of his receiving either 
wounds or imprisonment. 

In the meantime a number of Irish-American officers had left for the 
scene of action, believing that Stephens could not possibly refuse after his 
public promises to make his appearance on the field where that struggle, 
which he had so often described in his American speeches, was to take 
place. The home organization — or that portion of it still in existence — 
felt disgusted and bitter over the whole fiasco, and determined that if it 
was to be a failure, Ireland's hopes should be crushed in fight. Delegates 
left for London, where insurrection was decided upon. The much-spoken 
of Chester Castle raid was one of the plans submitted and about to be put 
into operation. This plan was opposed by many of the American officers, 
Colonel Rickard Burke being very determined in opposition. Stephens' 
cowardice and defection had loosened the bonds of discipline, and there 
was not the same unanimity as before. With the exception of Colonel 
Kelly, and one or two others who took no part in the Chester Castle plan, 
the most scientific soldiers had retired from the movement a long time 
before. The plan to seize Chester Castle — where the arms removed from 
the Pigeon House Fort, Dublin, were stored, and which but for Stephens 
would have been long since in the hands of Irish Republican soldiers — 
might have been successful but for the treachery of Corydon, for which 
he has since accounted. The seizure of the Castle could not be very 
difficult ; it had no defenders to resist an attack of armed men. Twenty 
thousand Irishmen were ordered out. A certain number to different 



PLAN TO SEIZE CHESTER CASTLE. 117 

towns where officers were sent to command them. This part of the pro- 
gramme was carried out. The men left their employment as ordered, and 
twenty thousand Irish Republican revolutionists were actually concentrated 
ready for action in the enemy s country. According to the plans arranged, 
the arms and ammunition when seized were to be quickly put on board a 
train which was to leave at once for Holyhead. A portion of these arms 
were to be distributed among the Irish forlorn hope, who, with what arms 
they were already in possession of, were to take the field in England, and 
so cause such a diversion in favor of their comrades in Ireland and such 
a panic in England that before their defeat they hoped to make the towns 
of the enemy ring with the news of Irish retaliation, and that the war of 
centuries, carried on with the steady purpose of annihilating the Irish race, 
would re-act upon the British themselves. This desperate attempt, or 
rather resolution, on the part of officers and men, shows the despairing and 
reckless state of mind the demoralization which set in at the close of 1865 
in the I. R. B. organization caused to the then leaders, who like the stag 
at bay were determined to sell their lives dearly. None of the brave fel- 
lows who volunteered to take the field in England expected to long sur- 
vive the desperate attempt ; but the destruction they would cause the 
enemy would be worth the sacrifice of every life. Men were ordered to 
Holyhead in advance of these preparations ; they went there and were out 
one night in that inclement season. Had they succeeded in surprising 
the Castle and seizing the arms and ammunition, they would have at once 
armed all their men in and about Chester. To seize the railway station 
and cut the telegraph wires would be the work of a short time. Among 
the men ordered to Chester were efficient engineers to take charge of the 
locomotives and also the steam vessels at Holyhead in the event of the 
movement being so far successful. A special train carrying arms and men 
was to leave for Holyhead ; the men there were if possible to get on board 
the mail steamer which was ready at the pier to depart for Kingstown, 
and on the arrival of their comrades and the arms from Chester seize the 
two mail steamers there, getting up steam, under the supervision of their 
own engineers, then cross over at full speed to Ireland, landing men and 
arms at the most convenient place on the coast. A "rising" in Dublin 
and another in Kerry was part of this plan, including a rising at Mallow 
Junction. Those who decided on this programme expected that the 
enemy, alarmed at a "rising" in the mountains of Kerry, would rush his 
troops into that part of the island and try to at once crush the insurrec- 
tion there before it would spread, for the enemy's only hope of retaining 
his foothold in Ireland was to extinguish instantaneously the first spark 
of revolution. If once the Irish could concentrate in any force to form 
the nucleus of an army, their numbers and valor would destroy any hope 
of Britain being able to reconquer the insurgent nation. When the 
enemy's troops had poured into Kerry, the Mallow insurgents had orders 
to tear up the railroads at the Junction, and in every possible manner 
impede the return of the enemy, to give the Southern Irish time to concen- 
trate into armed battalions, and make the "rising" general. 

The promoters of this plan of campaign were correct in their surmises 
about the alarm of the invader. In their fright to suppress the Kerry 
" rising " they drained a great portion of the island of troops, and many 
important positions were denuded of the enemy's soldiery, giving the 
Irish the needed opportunity had the plan of insurrection been successful 
at its source. 

The enemy by no means underestimated the force necessary to sup- 
press an insurrection of Irishmen in such a mountainous region. They 
dispatched General Sir Alfred Horsford with a complete British division, 
ready equipped to meet a similar number of regular troops of a hostile 



n8 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

character, although there was only a small attempt at " rising " in 
Killarney and the neighborhood. 

The fact was the Kerry " rising " was partially started before the order 
came that Chester was a failure and not to " rise." This Chester Castle 
plan of insurrection was a rash and desperate undertaking at best ; it 
depended on so many distinct movements coming together at the proper 
instant of time that it is difficult for even the most sanguine to believe 
that it could have produced a successful armed insurrection. The 
treachery of a wretch who could not resist the cravings of poverty 
betrayed the attempt to seize Chester Castle, the only part of the move- 
ment he knew about. But for Corydon's treachery the Castle would 
undoubtedly have been captured and the arms seized, whatever the sequel 
might have been. 

Among the principal leaders of the Chester Castle raid were Captain 
John McCafferty, Mr. John Flood, who helped Stephens to escape from 
Dublin to France, and Mr. Austin Gibbons of Liverpool, now a prosperous 
builder in New York city. 

Another of the men who went to assist in the Chester Castle plan of 
taking the field was Captain John Kirwan. After Stephens' escape from 
prison, principally through his control of the forces inside the prison, as 
already related, Captain Kirwan, in spite of his name appearing in the 
Hue and Cry gazette, endeavored under the difficulties of his position 
to remain in Dundrum, close to Dublin city. He inspired his men and 
tried to impart to his circle his own sanguine hope of taking the field. 
Stephens' conduct and his subsequent departure from Ireland amazed 
him, but he still clung to the belief that his country would soon commence 
the long looked for armed struggle with her foe. He was supported by 
his patriotic wife, who was not in any way behind her husband in 
patriotism. When Edward Duffey, who succeeded Stephens in authority, 
required some messenger to bring a box of revolvers and a quantity of 
ammunition to the West of Ireland Mrs. Kirwan volunteered her services 
and successfully carried out her mission. When it is recollected that 
the country was overrun with swarms of the enemy's detectives, and the 
fearful punishment of penal servitude, Mrs. Kirwan's courage and 
address will be appreciated. Ireland has a noble band of patriots in her 
loyal daughters. Kirwan found he had to leave Dublin and seek some 
employment ; he succeeded in getting to Drogheda and from thence to 
Liverpool, where he determined to remain near Ireland until the hour 
to strike had come. When he reached Liverpool he reported himself to 
Captain O'Rourke of the 88th N. Y. Vols., who was chief officer 
for the Irish cause in that city. Captain O'Rourke, who went by the 
name Beecher, was one of the most self-sacrificing and energetic of the 
gallant band of Irish-American soldiers of the Civil War that lent their 
assistance to their fatherland. Among those who were there in Liverpool 
was Captain O'Carroll, Captain Thomas Costello, Colonel John J. Connor, 
of the Mass. Vols., who left for Kerry to head the " rising " there ; 
Major Quinn of the 9th Mass., a glorious soldier and gallant gentleman, 
at this time he was in ill health, suffering from numerous wounds ; 
Captain Smith of the U. S. Artillery ; Captain Charles Joyce and another 
captain of the same name ; Captain Laurence O'Brien of 9th Conn. Vols. ; 
Lieutenant O'Brien (Keokuk), U. S. Regular Army ; Colonel Moran, N. J. 
Vols. ; Captain Heffernen, late of the C. S. A. ; Lieutenants Hartigan 
and Donovan ; Captain John McAfferty, C. S. A., and Colonel Rickard 
Burke, U. S. Engineers, and several other brave fellows who were waiting 
to begin the fight during that weary year of 1866. 

Captain Kirwan was with fifty men rendezvoused at Runcorn Gap. 
At this place was the only bridge within miles crossing the river Dee. 



PLAN TO SEIZE CHESTER CASTLE. 119 

Kirwan's orders were to hold the bridge until re-enforced in the event of 
Chester Castle failing into the hands of the Irish soldiers. In the City 
of Chester itself there was concentrated four thousand Irish troops. The 
hotels were filled to overflowing, and numbers of men had to bivouack in 
the streets. The citizens were very civil to them. It was rumored there 
was a prize fight to come off in the neighborhood, which in a measure 
accounted for the large number of men who had come to Chester. The 
police were suspicious, but were powerless in the face of such a force. 
But the visitors gave no trouble, were very peaceful, and paid for all they 
required. 

When it was discovered that the secret of the attempt to capture 
Chester Castle was betrayed to the enemy, the men were ordered to dis- 
perse to their homes. And that numerous body of men returned to their 
various towns without the smallest trouble, so perfect was the discipline 
of the movement in the enemy's country. 

The information which was conveyed to the enemy and which upset 
the plan to capture the arms stored in Chester Castle caused a feeling of 
dissatisfaction among the leading spirits, who were determined that a fight 
should come off at all hazards. Captain John McCafferty and John 
Flood left in a coal brig for Dublin. Their mission was to make arrange- 
ments to take the field. Unfortunately, Corydon, who was one of the 
American visitors and who of course was never suspected of treason, 
knew of their departure and informed the enemy. The brig was watched 
on her arrival in the Liffey. Captains McCafferty and Flood tried to get 
ashore in the small boat, but were overtaken by the enemy, overpowered, 
and captured. 

When the news was circulated among the men in Liverpool that a fight 
in Ireland had been decided on, Captain John Kirwan called at Captain 
O'Rourke's quarters in Seymour Street and reported for active service. 
Captain O'Rourke tried to urge on him the necessity of not going to 
Ireland for some time ; that his appearance was well known to numerous 
detectives, and that not only was he sure to be made a prise ner of by the 
now vigilant foe, but that his presence would endanger the liberty of his 
comrades. Kirwan reminded O'Rourke that he was a Dublin centre, 
and had great influence among his men ; that he was a practical soldier, 
and that his presence would be of service to the nation at the commence- 
ment of hostilities. He further stated his determination to go to Ireland 
if he had to swim there. Captain O'Rourke, seeing the earnestness of 
Kirwan, told him that a vessel would sail from the port of Garston, some 
seven miles above Liverpool, on the Mersey, that she would endeavor to 
make a landing on the Irish coast, and that he would be accompanied by 
some Irish-American officers and some military stores. 

Captain Kirwan, being a native of Dublin and familiar with the country, 
was ordered to take military command of those he found on board the 
vessel en route to Ireland, and to aid in every way the successful landing 
of the officers. The spice of danger in the expedition delighted John 
Kirwan. He visited his place of business, drew ,£10 that was due him, pur- 
chased seven revolvers and suitable ammunition for his boys in Dublin, 
and packed up. He was as light-hearted going on his mission of death 
as if it were a pleasure excursion. He got in the omnibus for Garston, 
and on arriving at the dock the first person he met was Corydon, who 
came down ostensibly for the purpose of seeing them off, but of course 
in reality to betray them to the enemy. Fortunately for Captain Kirwan 
he had a personal dislike to Corydon ; he did not approve of his general 
conduct, and avoided the informer's company as much as possible, without 
giving him a direct insult. 

The ship was named S , and the owner and navigator was a mem- 



120 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

ber of the I. R. B. The vessel was cleared with a cargo of coal from 
Garston to Douglas, Isle of Man, and the owner agreed to sail by Doug- 
las and land his passengers on the Irish coast before attending to his 
own private business. On nearing the Irish coast the captain of the 
vessel informed his guest that he had orders to land them at Malahide, 
nine miles north of Dublin. That they would be there met by a friend 
who would get them to Dublin city. 

To the American officers it was immaterial where they landed, north 
or south of Dublin, so that they safely arrived in that city. To Captain 
John Kirwan, who was responsible for their safety, it was of the utmost 
importance they should land near his friends. As there was no one he 
knew in Malahide he urged the captain not to land them there, that he 
would not be responsible for their safety. But if landed anywhere south 
of Dublin, where he had many friends, he thought that he could get him- 
self and comrades safe into the city. The captain of the vessel acquiesced 
in Kirwan's suggestion, and it was agreed to land on Killiney Strand, 
about eight miles south of Dublin. There was some hesitation displayed 
by some of the officers to land at this place. They feared they would 
be captured by the coast guards. Like most people unfamiliar with Ire- 
land, they had an exaggerated idea of Britain's careful guarding of the 
Irish coast, which the enemy endeavors to make mankind for her own 
purposes believe. The facts are, there is no trouble whatever in making 
a landing on any part of the Irish coast, more especially for an armed 
force prepared to fight. Nothing in the way of warfare is more easy of 
accomplishment, particularly in these days of steam power. Timid, vac- 
illating, and slavish Irishmen try to teach that this is impossible. There 
is no such a word as impossible to brave, earnest, and intelligent men. 
Captain Kirwan told his Irish-American friends that the most they could 
possibly meet would be an armed patrol of two men, and that he would 
volunteer after landing to go ahead with a comrade and meet the patrol 
if it came in their way. They were landed on the white strand at 
Killiney, at the foot of a road leading from the beach to Shankhill 
Station, Dublin, Wicklow & Wexford R. R. A force of ten thousand 
men could as easily have been landed. Two lines of railroad were within 
easy distance of the landing place. 

Captain Kirwan and Captain Heffernen leading, the party reached 
the road from Dublin to Bray near the villages of Shankhill and Crinkin. 
It was now midnight, and espying some unfinished cottages, Kirwan 
suggested that his friends should seek shelter and concealment there 
until he applied to his friend Luke Byrne, who kept a well known inn at 
Crinkenf for accommodation. 

Just as Kirwan awoke Mr. Byrne, a number of carmen arrived at 
the inn. He was compelled to change his purpose, as it would be the 
height of imprudence to bring his friends there in the presence of the new 
visitors. Kirwan was now in a dilemma and consulted with his comrades, 
Major Quinn, Captain Heffernen, and others. To advance by the coast 
road toward Dublin, he would pass Ballybrack, Kingstown, and several 
police barracks en route. If they took the Mountain Road they would 
pass Glencullen, Stepaside, or Cabinteely ; either road involved the risk 
of capture. To fight and resist arrest would mean premature action. 
Finally Kirwan decided they would walk along the railroad track, which 
in Europe is entirely private property and never patroled by any officials. 
The railroad here is flanked at both sides with grassy slopes. The little 
party walked upon this embankment, so as to make the least noise pos- 
sible. On reaching Carrickmines they left the railroad track, as Kirwan 

had a friend, a Mr. F , who lived near by. Leaving his friends resting 

in a field, accompanied by Major Quinn he sought the home of Mr. F , 



PLAN TO SEIZE CHESTER CASTLE. 121 

who was an I. R. B man. F was astonished and delighted at seeing 

Captain Kirwan ; he cordially greeted his friends and gave them shelter 
and hospitality. 

The following morning it was agreed that they should start off early 
to the city. They eventually arrived, after some unimportant adventures, 
in Ireland's capital, to make preparations to begin a campaign under the 
most disheartening auspices that could be possible. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

(1867.) 

RISING OF THE 5TH OF MARCH — ATTEMPT IN SOME DISTRICTS TO COUNTER- 
MAND THE ORDER — TALLAGHT, STEPASIDE, AND GLENCULLEN. 

British Army — Numerically Small — Wretched Material Physically — Hesitation and Pro- 
crastination of Irish Leaders — Corydon's Attempts to Ensnare Kirwan — His Fail- 
ure — The Corydon Hat — Officers Arrested — Kirwan meets his "Circle" at Black- 
Pits — Preparations for the " Rising " — Getting Artillery Ammunition — Kirwan's Plans 
to Meet Emergencies — Meeting of Dublin Centres at Anderson's, Rathmines — Massey 
Present — Concentration at Tallaght Decided on — General Halpin's Meeting of Cen- 
tres on the Greenhills, Tallaght — The Night of the " Rising" — "Royal" Irish at 
Tallaght — Fright of the Constabulary — Death of Stephen O'Donohue — Rewards to 
Inspector Burke — Kirwan's Column Concentrates at Path-Fields, Rathmines — March 
to Dundrum — Capture of Policemen — Kirwan Looking for Aylward and the Ex- 
pected Artillery — Aylward Does Not Come — Dundrum Police Barracks Summoned 
to Surrender — No Answer — Kirwan Reconnoiters and is Shot — The Wounded Man 
is Removed on a Car — Captain P. Lennon Commands the Column — March Toward 
Bray — Attack on Stepaside Police Barracks — Inspector Mcllvaine Surrenders — 
Prisoners, Arms, and Ammunition Captured — Lennon's Disappointment — Bray in 
Possession of the Enemy — The Column Returns to Dublin — Attack on Glencullen 
Barracks — Glencullen Surrenders — March to Dublin — No News of Halpin — No Re- 
enforcements — The Column Disbands — Colonel Thomas F. Burke's Address in the 
Dock — Death Sentences — Inspector D. Burke's Nervousness — Captain John Kirwan 
Captured — Sent to Hospital — Plans for his Escape — Escape Successful. 

The men who then controlled the National policy of Ireland were 
determined to bring on a fight with the foe if possible. Notwithstanding 
the demoralized state of the country through the blundering inaction of 
1865, these men felt that Ireland's honor demanded an appeal to arms. 
This remnant of what had been in 1865 a powerful and united organiza- 
tion held a convention in England and instructed the military leaders to 
put what men they could into action and place once again the fortunes 
of Ireland at the arbitrament of war in the open field. 

Every advantage that Ireland possessed in 1865 was gone. The 
disaffected troops were all, or nearly all, removed and replaced by 
others. The enemy was now fully alive to the importance and strength 
of the movement. The most skilled of the military leaders had left 
Ireland, disgusted at James Stephens' cowardly procrastination. That 
enthusiasm which is an important factor in all such movements had been 
succeeded by want of confidence in the ability of those in authority, 
and the enemy's daily slanders, followed by so many captures without 
the smallest retaliation, filled men's mind with doubt as to the intentions 
of the principal men. In a spirit of desperation and to save their own 
and the nation's honor, which they considered were pledged by Stephens' 
open declaration in America, the loyal portion of the movement 
decided to fight. Irish-American soldiers were endeavoring to reach 
their various commands in the different parts of the country. But unlike 
the freedom with which they could move in 1865, they found it almost 
impossible to safely reach the scene of the proposed operations, where their 
military knowledge or the prestige of having been in the American Civil 
War made their presence useful. The enemy had suspended their Habeas 
Corpus Act and arrested men on the smallest suspicion. There are 
two axioms which Irish patriot leaders are more than careful to follow : 




CAPTAIN JOHN KIRWAN, CHEVALIER AND KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN SPUR, 
In the uniform of the Papal Army, 



RISING OF THE 5TH OF MARCH. 123 

1. Be not too precipitate. 2. Never underrate the strength of your 
opponent. Had those whom the Irish people chosen as leaders recollected 
that successful revolutions are made by those who combine daring and 
audacity with wisdom, the fortunes of the Irish race might have been 
somewhat improved. It is certain that the history of Ireland would con- 
tain some brighter and more brilliant pages of the valor of her sons if 
the hour for action had not only been delayed but permitted to pass away 
under this theory of being not too precipitate. In 1798, 1848, and 1865 
this was exemplified by events. The commencement of the campaign in 
in each epoch was kept back ; the leaders allowed the priming to fall out 
of their weapons without firing a shot. The contemptible force of the 
enemy that Ireland has to deal with is small numerically and wretched as 
to material. The British Army is composed of the outcasts of society and 
the boys who are unemployed in her large cities, the poorest of the raw 
material to make fighting men. The exaggerated and fancied power of 
Britain is purely imaginary. She takes care to spread abroad in her 
journals and her newspapers a belief that she is one of the great powers. 
There is not the smallest doubt that in point of numbers or valor the 
British army is contemptible beside even the smallest nations of Europe. 
Newly enfranchised Bulgaria could undoubtedly defeat this much bragged 
of British Army. The Bulgarians are patriots and every man is liable to 
military service, but the blustering, cowardly Briton prefers to hire the 
corner boys of his cities to do his fighting. He only defends his flag 
over tap-room fires. To those who are carried away with the influence 
and glamour which British writers and poets have endeavored — and 
successfully — to cast around the so-called glory and chivalry of Britain, 
we point to some plain facts. Since the commencement of the present 
century Britain has fouglU but two nations single-handed, that is, of the 
Caucasian race. In 181 2-14 she was met and defeated on sea and 
land by the American sailors and soldiers, and more recently by the 
Boers in Africa, who sent her crack regiments running down Majuba Hill. 
If Irishmen could only be made to understand that British physical 
power is like a huge bladder filled with wind, the sting of an American mos- 
quito would explode the monster sham. In point of numbers the Irish 
patriot soldiers could muster ten to one undersized Briton, regiments of 
boys in most part, many of them not over sixteen years. If Irishmen had 
modern weapons and proper commanders, resolute, brave, and deter- 
mined men, they would make the redcoats fly as quickly from Ireland 
as the Boers did in the Transvaal. But those who are responsible for 
Ireland's abortive attempts to take the field are not always masters of the 
relative conditions of the two nations, and in endeavoring to build up a 
big organization in Ireland, magnifying the power of the enemy, lose the 
opportunity, and when too late try to strike when the power had slipped 
away from their grasp. This was notably the case on the 5th of March, 
1867, but the brave men who tried to bring on the fight are not to be 
held responsible for the want of determination shown by the C. O. I. R. 

To further cast confusion among the men who were planning a fight, 
Corydon, the informer, was endeavoring to find all possible information 
to give to the enemy. This, if Ireland had been in the same condition as 
in 1865, would have been of small importance. 

When Captain John Kirwan and his comrades reached Dublin, they 
learned that a party of soldiers and police were on the.lookout for them 
at Malahide, and that every vessel coming in there or in the neighborhood 
was carefully searched. Landing at Killiney instead of at Malahide, as 
originally intended, destroyed Corydon's pre-arranged plan for their 
capture. 

Captain Kirwan, fearing he might be arrested before striking a blow, 



124 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

told his wife to deny him to every caller. Corydon was most urgent in 
trying to discover his whereabouts, but, fortunately for Kirwan, failed. 
It was Kirwan's caution which saved him, for although he disliked Cory- 
don he had not the faintest suspicion of his treason. 

Had Corydon taken the field in 1865 with the rest of the American 
soldiers, the chances are he would have conducted himself with credit, 
but thrown as he was in a vicious city (Liverpool), waiting for the prom- 
ised fight for over seventeen months, steeped in poverty and in suffer- 
ing, he succumbed to the temptation which he knew was always before 
him — British gold. Corydon at this period was stylishly dressed, and each 
time he called to try and see Kirwan, or through his wife entrap him into an 
interview, he had a posse of detectives near by. One article of his cos- 
tume was a half-high cassimere hat, then much in vogue, called the Muller 
hat. When chaffed about his hat and get-up by the American soldiers, he 
said that a friend presented him with his hat and kindly volunteered to pro- 
cure a similar head dress for his friends, who were wearing old head 
coverings, of various styles. This was Corydon's plan to have the officers 
arrested on reaching their destination. The enemy's police and detec- 
tives arrested every man who was unfortunate enough to wear the Cory- 
don hat, as it was called some time after. Major Quinn, on stepping off 
the railroad platform at Athlone, was pounced upon at once; his descrip- 
tion and the Corydon hat was in possession of the foe. 

February, 1867, was a very exciting time in Dublin. Hurried 
attempts were made to re-organize the shattered ranks of the I. R. B., 
but still men were doubtful as to the sincerity of the report that there 
was to be a fight this time. Kirwan's circle met at John Feury's Black 
Pitts, where he attended and carefully inspected his men. In addition 
to the rifles which were buried, he had 250 pike heads in a box, and a 
patriotic friend, William Cosgrove, a carpenter, engaged to supply him 
with handles for his ancient weapons. The rifles were taken out of their 
coffins and looked to ; every preparation that the brave fellows could 
make they did. 

A meeting of the Dublin centres was held at the close of February, 
1867, at a Mr. Anderson's, in Upper Rathmines. General Massey was in 
the chair. The object of the meeting was to fix the date for the forth- 
coming appeal to arms. Massey asked if any of the centres knew a 
wooded height in the neighborhood of the city where the men could be 
drawn up, having the advantage of cover. Captain Kirwan suggested 
the " Scalp " as an excellent place to concentrate. The " Scalp " is a long 
defile or gap in-the range of mountains which divide Wicklow from Dublin. 
It is commanded by high hills on either side, which, if occupied and held 
in force by the Irish troops, with the works of the Ballycorns lead mines 
on their crests, it was thought it could be made defensible with field forti- 
fications. The road across the mountains leads to Enniskerryand within 
a short distance was the Dublin, Wicklow & Wexford railroad. Massey 
concluded that this place would not be suitable. He thought that some 
position in the neighborhood of the Great Southern and Western railroad 
from Dublin to Cork was necessary to occupy. He suggested that they 
make the campaign along this line, occupying all commanding positions, 
and there throw up intrenchments, fortifying and defending the villages, 
and if driven back to fall within striking distance of the line, tearing up 
the railroad track, destroying telegraph wires, and cutting off if possible 
the enemy's communication with the south of Ireland. Captain Kirwan 
and one or two other Dublin centres suggested Tallaght Hill as the place 
of rendezvous. Tallaght Hill is a wooded eminence about five miles from 
Dublin City. It is a spur of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains and 
rises abruptly over a little village of the same name. This elevation 



RISING OF THE 5TH OF MARCH. 125 

stretches away to the left to meet the hill of Kilikee with a well-known 
mansion, easily defended, on the summit, and passing over it is the great 
military road made by the invaders to try and keep the man of Wicklow 
in subjection. On the right, with your back to the Metropolis, at about 
half a mile distance, lies the historic village of Clondalkin, with its cele- 
brated round tower and other ancient edifices. Here it was that Strong- 
bow's son engaged the Irish army and was defeated. 

Tallaght Hill is approachable from Dublin by the military or Naas 
Road leading west and passing the village of Clondalkin, the first rail- 
road station on the Great Southern and Western line, with the Green Hills 
and the Terenure Road from Dublin to Tallaght as the principal roads. 
Having discussed the advantages of this position, the night of Shrove- 
Tuesday, March 5, was decided on for the appeal to arms, and the Hill 
of Tallaght as the place of rendezvous. This order was officially 
announced to the centres present, with instructions to inform their circles 
and prepare for the expected fight. 

This was the last seen of Massey by the Dublin men. He was arrested 
through Corydon's information at Limerick Junction, and like his comrade 
Corydon weakened and betrayed to the enemy what secrets he possessed. 

One of the many mansions in the neighborhood of Dublin was Lord 
Gough's. It was situated not far from the city. On the lawn before the 
principal entrance were six 24-pound field guns, which Lord Gough cap- 
tured from the Sikhs during his Indian campaign. These cannon had 
been long looked upon as legitimate spoil by the Irish soldiers whenever 
a fight would commence, and in the impoverished condition of his 
armament Captain John Kirvvan determined he would have them for his 
command. John O'Clohissey, an ex-artilleryman, who had served 
Britain in her Indian wars and who was one of the old Dublin centres, 
was the officer appointed to effect the capture of these guns when the 
campaign which was promised in 1865 was to open. Clohissey was 
among the men captured by the enemy when the Irish People was seized 
in September of that year, and was among the men imprisoned. A 
Mr. Charles O'Callaghan succeeded to the command of the circle, and 
when the rising was decided on for the 5th of March, the capture of these 
guns and the giving of them over to Captain Kirwan's command by 
O'Callaghan's circle was ordered, he being an experienced artilleryman 
and a practical soldier. 

Among the members of this circle was a Mr. Alfred Aylward, who 
claimed to have served under Garibaldi in Naples. He was introduced 
to Captain Kirwan, of whom he asked and obtained permission to capture 
and take charge of these guns on the night of the " rising," and join 
Captain Kirwan's circle with them on the line of march. 

The next important step was to procure ammunition for these guns, 
but Captain Kirwan was equal to the occasion. One can scarcely refrain 
from smiling when the straits to which these brave men were put to are 
considered. The paucity of stores to commence a war of independence 
may possibly meet with sneers from critics who would do nothing them- 
selves, and who are always inclined to cavil and depreciate the efforts of 
Irishmen who would resort to manly methods to free their country from the 
horde of usurpers who are battening on the land and destroying its people. 
It should be remembered that the small number of men who commenced 
the war in 1798, which grew in power and numbers, had not even pikes 
to begin the fight, but with shovels and bludgeons disarmed the College 
Green Parliamentary Yeomen and lit a flame that brought the manhood of 
Wexford and Wicklow into the field. Several battles were fought by these 
peasant soldiers in which the enemy's regular troops were defeated. 
Oulart Hill, Gorey, Ennlscorthy, and New Ross speak in eloquent words of 



126 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the valor of these noble and heroic patriots. And had not Britain held 
in Ireland at that time an enormous army of foreign mercenary troops 
she would have been completely routed by the gallant men of '98. 
Fortunately for Ireland, the days of hiring Hessian soldiers to preserve 
British conquests have passed away. 

The Greek patriots, in their war against the Turks for freedom, in 
many instances came to join the patriot armies their only weapons huge 
bludgeons. There can be no possible conclusions come to as to what 
the result may be when a people are determined to die or throw off the 
yoke of the foreigner. 

Captain Kirwan procured over one hundred yards of drag rope and 
arranged it so that it could be used to pull the guns by hand, or as traces 
for horses. A young builder, one of the I. R. B., promised to procure 
him ten horses from his father's stable, and a leading business man 
tendered him whatever assistance he could to help his circle to take the 
field. He procured five hundred pounds of gunpowder, got flannel and 
made it into eight-pound cartridges. He got, through some of the I. R. 
B. who worked in a neighboring ironworks, twenty stone weight of screw 
punchings. He had these placed in twenty-four-pound tin cases, loaded 
and made to fit the bore of the guns ; made tubes for the vent, procured 
port-fire sticks and tinder, and in fact left nothing undone that his 
limited means would permit him, or the exigencies of the occasion 
demand, to make Aylward's mission on the 5th of March a success. He 
detailed twenty-seven young men, trained artillery soldiers, who had 
served with him in the Dublin City Artillery, to accompany Aylward to 
work the fieldpieces when captured. 

General Halpin, who was in command in Dublin and who had com- 
manded a Kentucky regiment in the American Civil War, called a 
special meeting of the Dublin centres on the Sunday previous to the 
" rising." 

The object of the meeting was to arrange the exact place where the 
Irish soldiers were to concentrate, and to concert a definite plan of action. 
The place of meeting was the Green Hills, Tallaght. 

The meeting took place in a sheltered spot between four hills, where 
the Irish patriots used to drill. After some discussion Captain Kirwan 
objected to their ensconcing themselves in a hollow, where nothing but 
the sky could be seen. He proposed that they proceed to Tymon Castle, 
which was on an eminence near them, and there they would have a full 
view of the surrounding country. The General overruled this, as he 
feared that other than friends might notice their movements. A discus- 
sion of the details of organization then took place, principally between 
Kirwan and Halpin. 

The Dublin centres had full confidence in Kirwan as a military man, 
and as one who was familiar with every part of the country. Matthew 
Neal and Charles O'Callaghan volunteered to place their circles under 
Kirwan's command on the night of the " rising." 

After what disposition was considered necessary had been made, the 
party broke up. Kirwan, accompanied by one or two of the centres, 
walked about the neighborhood, and from the best room of a friendly 
tavern had an excellent view of the country which they meant to make 
the theater of war. Captain Kirwan pointed out to his companions as 
they gazed on the splendid panorama spread out before them, the posi- 
tion he intended, God willing, to occupy on the morning of the 6th of 
March, namely, the hill and house of Kilikee already mentioned. He 
intended to have the house fortified and surrounded with fieldworks, fell- 
ing the trees and covering the approaches with abattis and rifle pits, 
tearing up the military road and holding the position till the last gasp, to 



RISING OF THE 5TH OF MARCH. 127 

enable the country to rise en masse to drive out the foreigner from the 
sacred soil of their motherland. 

The concentration on Tallaght was to have taken place in three 
columns — the left flank commanded by Captain Kirwan as described ; the 
right by an American officer, who was to occupy the village of Tallaght ; 
to loop-hole the houses whose backs looked toward the city ; and to 
intrench as quickly as possible ; throwing up fieldworks across the roads 
leading to the city. It was thought that the Irish would have been able 
to reach the place of concentration before the enemy's troops would have 
joined in pursuit. In the event of this column being hard pressed, as it 
was thought it would first feel the whole force of the enemy, its com- 
mander was instructed to retire up the hill to Captain Kirwan's position 
and there reorganize behind his intrenchments. 

General Halpin, who was the commander-in-chief, was to lead a third 
column, and, if the concentration, as it was hoped, was successful, to take 
the further direction of affairs. 

Such was the crude plan of action intended to be carried out by those 
responsible for the success of the Dublin movement. 

The 5th of March attempt to take the field could not be properly 
designated a " rising," for in the majority of the districts there were 
orders sent out to countermand the instructions to " rise," so that the 
movement was but a partial and abortive attempt. There was no central 
union of authority or direction ; the idea appeared to be to get the men 
into the field anyhow, and let the chapter of accidents decide the rest. 
It has been thought that if the men of Dublin, instead of being 
ordered to Tallaght, had commenced the insurrection in the city of 
Dublin, and had thrown up barricades all over the town, there would 
have been no difficulty in concentrating the men. This action would 
have fired the spirits and enthusiasm of even those outside the organiza- 
tion. To collect a respectable force at Tallaght was indeed a difficult 
operation, when it is considered that it was the most bitter and arctic 
March remembered in Ireland during the present generation. 

One fact which all these abortive attempts at insurrection proved, 
was the willingness on the part of the men to obey their orders ; no man 
flinched, even men who had retired from the organization, disgusted at the 
vacillation and delay near the close of 1865, left their homes that bitter 
Shrove-Tuesday night to try and join their comrades. All were anxious 
to attack the enemy, but the leadership was in disorder, confusion, and 
chaos. 

Dublin was in a state of suppressed excitement on the Monday and 
Tuesday of that eventful week. Corydon was going about among the 
men procuring all the news he could for the enemy. There is no doubt 
that he made the British acquainted with the proposed place of concen- 
tration. 

In the ebbing tide of the organization, when want of confidence in 
the judgment of their chiefs had taken the place of previous high hopes, 
it was madness to attempt an insurrection. Had the season been the 
summer or autumn, that the men could gather together and sleep in the 
open air, there would always be the possibility of collecting an army 
disciplined and hardy to bear the sufferings of a winter campaign. 

Another stupid blunder was the attempt at secrecy, ordering the rising 
to take place at night. The early morning or broad noon is the time for 
an Irish insurrection ; the enemy, with his perfect organization, has always 
the advantage of scattered bands at night. The Dublin attempt to con- 
centrate a small force intrenched at Tallaght, displayed the stupidity of 
the plan decided on by the Irish officer in command. He concluded he 
could bring his men there before the enemy would be aware of it, and 



128 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

that their arms, which were dispatched in vans and carts, would reach 
them : these arms ivere brought back safely. He was accustomed to the 
movements of regular troops, and not familiar with the duty of command- 
ing insurgents. Had he ordered the men to arms in Dublin and then march 
out in small bodies, concentrating near the city en route to Tallaght, he 
probably would have brought the men ordered out there all right ; 
whether he would have succeeded in intrenching before being attacked 
is impossible to say, but the affair would not have been so ludicrous and 
contemptible. There was material and enough of men, armed and 
partially organized, who left their homes in Dublin that night, to have 
given a good account of themselves. The scene at Tallaght, where the 
police fired on the first group of unarmed insurgents, displayed the weak- 
ness of the enemy as well as the chaotic condition of the Irish. Had 
there been an officer in command of the advanced body of the insurgents, 
and had these men been armed and thrown out as skirmishers, they would 
have captured Inspector Burke's whole command of constabulary. 

The enemy, aware of the "rising" through Corydon's information, 
ordered Sub-Inspector of Constabulary Dominick F. Burke to collect a 
number of men from the surrounding districts and concentrate at the 
Tallaght Police Barracks. These military police were supplied with 
sixty rounds of ammunition to each man. They were dreadfully fright- 
ened ; all kinds of imaginary horrors ran through their minds. They 
were in a nervous state of dread of meeting the Irish patriots, of whose 
number and power they knew nothing, and which was greatly exaggerated 
by their fears. Being renegade Irishmen in the service of the foreign 
destroyer of the nation, they expected instant death if captured. Like 
their worthy employers, their minds were filled with thoughts of the 
ferocity of the approaching body of patriots, which frightened every 
constable. 

The Tallaght Police Barracks was very conveniently situated, facing 
the centre of a junction of cross roads ; at the opposite right-hand corner 
was a shrubbery which was skirted by a stone wall about four feet high. 
Inspector Burke posted his men in this shrubbery, from which position 
these armed men could enfilade by their fire either of the roads. Behind 
this stone wall the constabulary lay down with their rifles pointed toward 
any hostile force that should approach. After posting his men, their 
valiant commander, Inspector Burke, sought shelter from the nipping air 
in the police barracks on the opposite side of the road, out of reach of the 
fire of either friend or foe. The senior sergeant left in command would 
have very much wished to have followed the inspector's example, and 
rested beneath the police office roof, but what was " choleric " in the officer 
would have been rank blasphemy in the sergeant. This non-commissioned 
officer, alternately praying and cursing, and in a state of nervous prostra- 
tion, implored one of his comrades to take the post of danger assigned 
him ; he gave as his reason the unfit condition he was in to die, having 
neglected his religious duties for some time. Placing another shivering 
man in the position he occupied, the second in command sought con- 
venient shelter from the assault of the dreaded foe. Such was the condi- 
tion of the enemy's troops defending Tallaght ; their morale was con- 
temptible, and had the approaching Irish been armed, and attacked them 
with any ardor, they would have surrendered through fright. 

The advancing I. R. B. consisted of about ten or twelve unarmed 
men, who had outstripped their comrades of the main body and were 
advancing to the place of rendezvous where they were instructed to con- 
centrate. A little in advance of his comrades was one of the Dublin 
officers, Stephen O'Donoghue, a law clerk, which gentleman alone of the 
party carried a rifle ; but the weapon was useless, as it was unloaded. 



RISING OF THE 5TH OF MARCH. 129 

The I. R. B. never dreamt of an ambuscade, and did not think they 
would be attacked before concentrating, as they thought the enemy's 
forces were in the rear, and that they would reach the appointed place 
near where they were to meet their friends, with the vans containing their 
arms, accouterments, and munitions of war. According to their instruc- 
tions they were to quickly arm and be ready to receive the enemy, intrench- 
ing if possible ; they also understood a second insurrection of a more 
formidable nature would take place within the city, as soon as the enemy's 
troops had left for Tallaght. The insurgents hoped to intrench them- 
selves inside and on the roads leading west from Dublin, there to raise 
the standard of revolution. Lord Strathnairn, the enemy's commander- 
in-chief, with the greater part of the Dublin garrison, pursued these 
scattered bands from the city ; although the " rising " was abortive, the 
enemy was seriously frightened for a while. 

Meanwhile, the advancing I. R. B. was leisurely proceeding to their 
rendezvous, when the noise of approaching footsteps aroused the fright- 
ened constabulary. With chattering teeth and nervous trepidation, not 
knowing whether it was friend or foe was in their front, they pulled the 
triggers of their leveled rifles. Their shooting was as wild as their fears. 
Stephen O'Donoghue, who was a pace or two in advance of his friends, 
received a mortal wound. Another I. R. B. man, James Farrell, was 
wounded in the thigh ; the other shots scattered and so did the unarmed 
Irish. 

Mr. O'Donoghue was brought to a neighboring cabin. In the mean- 
time the police began to load and fire at random ; their courage was 
coming back to them, seeing that their foe had fled, and they were carry- 
ing on a sanguinary battle with the night. 

O'Donoghue lay dying on the bed of the peasant's cabin ; by his side 
stood crying a young lad of eighteen, sub-lieutenant of a regiment posted 
in the neighborhood ; possibly this British officer was an Irishman, but 
his grief was most remarkable. He assured O'Donoghue, who was nearly 
unconscious, and also the friends standing round, that none of his men 
fired the fatal shot. 

The whole of this Tallaght affair was the most peculiar and unique 
attempt at insurrection recorded in history. But let not Provincialists 
and cowards sneer; there were men there, disorganized as they were, who 
if armed would never have disgraced the race they came from, and not 
one man that left his home that bitter arctic Shrove-Tuesday night, but 
was filled with the resolution and courage to fight the enemy while life 
was left him. 

The grave of Irish success at that period was dug by James Stephens 
in 1865. 

This column which Stephen O'Donoghue belonged to, was to have 
been the body of men who were to intrench at Tallaght, what was called 
the right flank movement of the intended operations. General Halpin's 
column was alike unfortunate, although it preserved its formation, and 
after what appears aimlessly marching all night, failed to join Captain 
Kirwan's men, and disbanded. Neil Breslin, a. brother of John Breslin, 
was one of the centres with this column. 

Captain Kirwan's column was the only one that made the smallest 
attempt at fight on that eventful Shrove-Tuesday night, in the vicinity of 
Dublin. Captain Kirwan took a cab from the city and drove to Clon- 
skeogh bridge on the River Dodder, where the circle under the command of 
Captain Charles O'Callaghan had assembled. He went along the banks 
of the river to Milltown bridge, where he arrived about 9 p. m. He 
sent one of his men to the Path Fields near Rathmines Church, and over- 
looking Milltown, where the circle commanded by Captain Matthew 



13° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

O'Neil was to assemble ; as with the circle of Captain O'Callaghan, 
every man was at his post. His own circle, under the command of Cap- 
tain Patrick Lennon (an ex-British cavalry soldier, but of course an Irish- 
man), was drawn up at Palmerston Park. Kirwan quickly concentrated 
his force. The men were in the best of spirits and were congratulating 
each other on the success of their concentration, when Captain Kirwan 
gave the order " with ball cartridge load." This was before the days of 
breechloaders, and the rattle of the ramrods in the act of loading seemed 
to inspirit the men. " Lieutenant Lewis Duggan with eight men will take 

the advance, and Lieutenant L will deploy twenty-five men as 

flankers. Form fours, right march. Forward, march ! File closers 
will see that the men keep the muzzles of their pieces elevated and per- 
mit no man to leave the ranks without permission." And with these 
orders this gallant little band of Irishmen stepped forth on that bleak 
and bitter cold night. Their line of march led them past the dark arches 
at Milltown, where Lieutenant Duggan transferred to the column four of 
the Metropolitan police as prisoners. This capture enriched their arma- 
ment by four revolvers and four cutlasses. Thence they moved along the 
Dundrum Road to occupy the Kilikee Road. In Dundrum town the 
column halted. Aylward was to join the column at Dundrum .Railway 
Station, with the fieldpieces he was ordered to seize, but although 
they waited for a long time, and sent out scouts, there was no news 
of Aylward, and what Captain Kirwan considered a most valuable addition 
to his force did not appear. The men who were with Aylward, includ- 
ing the twenty-seven artillerymen, failed to report. Kirwan felt this 
was a severe blow to the success of his movement. It was afterward 
learned that. Aylward over-refreshed himself and became demoralized 
with some of his men. The others failed to find him, and his part of the 
movement was a disgraceful failure through neglect and what was treason 
through intemperance. 

Aylward since that time made a record for himself as a commander 
with the Boers in the war for independence in the Transvaal, but he never 
recovered the good opinion of his former comrades in the I. R. B. 

General Halpin, with the main body, was to join Captain Kirwan on 
the Kilikee road. Time was passing and there was no news of any of the 
expected supports. 

Kirwan advanced with twelve men to capture the police barracks. 
They battered at the door with the butts of their rifles, but there was no 
response from inside. Kirwan had just given the order to blow open 
the locks when a shot from a window above them struck Kirwan in front 
of the left shoulder, between the clavicle and collar bone, which placed 
him hors-de-combat. The column was then in the village of Dundrum, 
away from the stations ; there was no chance of Aylward's arrival and 
no supports from any quarter. Kirwan expected to have had Aylward's 
guns to strengthen his little force, and to reduce the police barracks. 
The very appearance of artillery would bring about a prompt surrender. 

The little column had now lost their commander, in whom they all 
felt the greatest confidence. An outside car was stopped and the 
wounded soldier was driven toward Dublin. Captain Patrick Lennon 
now assumed command of the column. He was a trained cavalry 
soldier, as fearless as a lion, but appeared to have no definite plan of 
operation. In fact, his march was principally to reach his supports, 
capturing the enemy's police barracks en route, which he successfully 
effected. He advanced to Stepaside, a small village at the foot of the 
Dublin Mountains, where he summoned the police barracks to surrender 
in the name of the Irish Republic. His demand meeting with a refusal 
he opened fire on the foe promptly, when Inspector Mcllwaine quickly 



RISING OF THE 5TH OF MARCH. 131 

hung out the white flag and surrendered his whole force of constabulary. 
By this surrender they captured a number of rifles and other military stores. 
Their prisoners had also increased. Captain Lennon marched his 
men toward Bray. He was under the impression that General Halpin's 
force had captured that town, or that the Wicklow men were in possession 
of it. Lieutenant Duggan was sent off to reconnoiter, and returned with' 
the dispiriting news that the town was not captured, but was held by the 
British in force. The constabulary force from surrounding districts had 
concentrated there. A consultation took place, and it was decided to 
retrace their line of march and try to find if any supports were out to 
join them. Captain Lennon was unaware of the failure, and expected 
that General Halpin was somewhere in the neighborhood with the more 
numerous main body. 

When they reached the village of the Golden Ball, County Dublin, 
they breakfasted at a baker's store, and then resumed their march. They 
made a detour to their left up Glencullen hill. Not far from them stood 
the police barracks, with the British lion and unicorn over the door. The 
constabulary here were summoned to surrender, which they refused, and 
skirmish fire was opened on them, while others of the party advanced to 
the door, which they broke in with sledge hammers and crowbars. The 
barracks was captured and the third batch of prisoners was placed in 
the column. With their thirty-nine prisoners they resumed their march. 
By twelve o'clock noon they found themselves nearing Dublin. Their 
scouts brought them back news of the failure of the movement in other 
directions. They had now marched for fifteen hours, having been out 
the whole of that inclement night, and, with the exception of the bread 
they got at the Golden Ball, without any food. With bitter reluctance 
Captain Lennon ordered them to disband when he discovered that there 
was no Irish force in the field near Dublin. The " rising " was an abor- 
tive and mismanaged affair. ■ Among the gallant fellows who marched 
out from Dublin that night under Captain John Kirwan was Thomas 
Brennan, afterward engaged in the Catalpa rescue, and who still lives 
with the hope that he will strike a blow for Irish freedom, Sergeant 
Henry P. Filgate, and others. 

The prisoners were released. They had been courteously treated by 
their captors, but all of them became witnesses in the enemy's courts 
against any Dublin prisoners arrested by the British. Irish valor and 
Irish chivalry is never reciprocated by the swinish rule of the Anglo- 
Saxon in Ireland. 

Numbers of men were arrested over the country for this abortive 
attempt at " rising." Several were sentenced to death for what the 
enemy had the audacity to term high treason. These men owed no 
allegiance to an invader whose laws and usurpation the Irish nation has 
never recognized. The brutal sentence was hanging, beheading, drawing, 
and quartering. Robert Emmet was the last Irish Nationalist upon 
whose body this atrocious sentence was carried out. Among the number 
of manly and patriotic utterances delivered by brave Irishmen in the 
enemy's dock when about to receive these horrid sentences of death, was 
one very remarkable and beautiful address, one of the finest since 
Emmet. Mitchell and Meagher addressed the enemy's so-called judge 
from a British dock. The speech of Colonel Thomas F. Bourke 
deserves notice. There are some very beautiful passages in this address 
when the place and circumstances under which it was delivered are 
considered : 

" I, my lords, have no desire for the name of martyr, but as it is the 
will of the Almighty and Omnipotent God that my devotion to the land 



I3 2 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

of my birth shall be tested on the scaffold, I am willing there to die in 
defense of the right of men to free government — the right of an 
oppressed people to throw off the yoke of thralldom. 1 am an Irishman 
by birth, an American by adoption ; by nature a lover of freedom — an 
enemy to the power that holds my native land in the bonds of tyranny. 
It has so often been admitted that an enslaved people have the right to 
throw off the yoke of oppression even by English statesmen, that I do 
not deem it necessary to advert to the fact in a British court. Ireland's 
children are not, never were, and never will be, willing or submissive slaves ; 
and so long as England's flag covers one inch of Irish soil, just so long 
will they believe it a divine right to conspire, imagine, and devise means 
to hurl from power the oppressor and to erect in its stead the Godlike 
structure of self-government. 

" I shall now look only to that home where sorrows are at an end and 
where joy is eternal. I shall hope and pray that freedom may yet dawn 
on this poor down-trodden country. It is my hope, it is my prayer to 
God for forgiveness and a prayer for poor old Ireland. 

" I submit to my doom, and I hope that God will forgive me my past 
sins. I hope that inasmuch as he has for seven hundred years preserved 
Ireland, notwithstanding all the tyranny to which she has been subjected, 
as a separate and distinct nationality, he will also assist her fallen 
fortunes to rise in beauty and majesty — the sister of Columbia, the peer 
of any nation in the world." 

When the rostrum from which this soul-inspiring speech was delivered 
is remembered, and the solemn position of the fervent orator, then stand- 
ing at the brink of the grave, is considered, it was no wonder that the 
Irish people felt a thrill of agony as they read the words of their gallant 
countryman, their heroic defender, facing the foe with defiance and 
scorn of their rule upon his dying lips. 

It is marvelous to think that a nation that can command the services 
of so many self-sacrificing men should remain so many centuries in bond- 
age, and that force has not been tried against the enemy since glorious 
'98, although now and then gallant efforts have been made by a few 
devoted men. Their desperate attempts have failed through lack of 
support on Xht part of their leaders, not that of the people, and they fall back 
to suffer in silence for their patriotism. 

In all these trials before the enemy's illegal and mock tribunals, 
perjury and falsehood were used to slander the men and the cause, 
although they had sufficient truthful evidence to convict their prisoners 
before their packed rebel juries. 

Inspector Burke, of Tallaght fame, whose men so courageously made 
battle with the night, was the lion of the hour. British journals and 
magazines rang with his heroism. He was presented with a gorgeous 
illuminated address, setting forth all his virtues, his splendid bravery, 
loyalty, and unflinching courage. He was hailed as the " Savior of 
Society," who extirpated the rascally Fenians in their mission of massacre, 
and all the flourishes of style which the invader's following uses ad nauseutn 
on such occasions. He also received the more substantial present of a 
handsome service of silver plate. The splendid valor of Mr. Burke and the 
Irish Constabulary even reached the foot of the throne, and although the 
valiant Inspector was not invested with the Victoria Cross for his remark- 
able achievements (and they were indeed remarkable), the constabulary 
was graciously permitted by the British Sovereign to henceforth bear the 
title of " Royal " added to their escutcheon. They have also been per- 



RISING OF THE 5TH OF MARCH. 133 

mitted to place a crown above the harp on their arms, and are known 
as the Royal Irish Constabulary since the sanguinary engagement at 
Tallaght. 

Mr. Burke, soon after that epoch, retired like a war-worn veteran on a 
suitable pension. Being so often hailed as the " Savior of Society," he 
imagines himself a hero who has performed prodigies of valor. He has 
a great horror of blood, and the sight of bleeding meat pains him very 
much. Whenever he visits the markets to make purchases and by acci- 
dent sees bleeding meat, he shudders with horror and exclaims frantically 
to the butcher : "Take it away ! take it away ! I have seen too much 
blood ! " Those who are present in the meat stalls invariably inquire 
who the horror-stricken gentleman is ? and when informed that the 
speaker is the celebrated martial hero, who was the commander-in-chief 
at the famous Battle of Tallaght, who saved his queen and country by 
his strategy and valor, they look on admiringly and listen with delight at 
his words. 

Captain John Kirwan, when driven from Dundrum on the night of 
the 5th of March, after staying at a friend's house in the neighborhood, 
where he had his wound dressed, succeeded in getting safely into Dublin. 
The enemy was very anxious to capture this daring man, whom they 
recognized as one of the ablest and most resolute among the Irish leaders 
in Dublin. His previous remarkable escapes annoyed the detectives, as 
did his success in getting away from them lately and staying in Dublin in 
spite of Corydon's treason. To all this the enemy was compelled to add 
his landing at Killiney with the Irish-American officers when they were 
seeking him at Malahide. A reward of one thousand dollars was offered 
for his capture. 

He was staying at the house of Mr. Edward Byrne, 39 Bishop Street. 
On the 6th of April the door of the room he occupied was burst open 
and nineteen detectives entered, and placing a revolver at Kirwan's head 
made the indomitable Irish patriot prisoner on the charge of high treason 
to the foreigner. Captain Kirwan's wound was not healed, and they 
sent for Dr. Carte, the Dublin police physician, to examine his wound and 
to see if he could be safely removed to prison. With the doctor came 
Sir George Anderson, the British Crown Solicitor, who placed a table in 
the center of the floor and went through the form of a legal committal. 
Dr. Carte being also a J. P. The physician pronounced Kirwan's wound 
very severe, and ordered him to the Long Lane Hospital. He was 
brought there guarded en route by soldiers and armed police. A police 
guard sat by his bedside, and the hospital was, as the blundering enemy 
thought, securely guarded. Although they took these precautions they 
never for a moment seriously thought that Captain Kirwan in his wounded 
condition would dream of attempting to escape. No male visitors were 
permitted to come near the wounded Nationalist. His wife and other 
ladies, however, got permission to see the sick man. 

On the Saturday evening after Captain Kirwan's admission to the 
Long Lane Hospital, a man was carried into the institution in a faint. 
He was brought into the ward where Kirwan was lying and was placed in 
a bed near the opposite wall. He glanced furtively around at every bed, 
and looked disappointed at the result of his inspection. Kirwan had so 
changed in appearance that he did not know him, but the captain recog- 
nized the newcomer as a friend. Kirwan sat up in the bed and coughed 
to attract attention, when the newcomer at once recognized him and 
located his position. The new patient was a man named John Gilleran, 
a B. or captain in Kirwan's circle. This man had a slight complaint of 
long standing which he exaggerated for the purpose of getting into the 
hospital and endeavoring to open communications with Kirwan. The 



134 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

captain, when he saw Gilleran, knew at once that his friends outside had 
not forgotten him, and that his escape was being planned. A policeman, 
armed with sword and revolver, was on guard at the foot of his bed ; 
another armed policeman patrolled the corrider ; Inspector Doran had 
charge of Kirwan and had a number of police guards within immediate 
call. But although these careful preparations were made by the British 
to guard their prisoner, any attempt on his part to leave in his wounded 
condition was believed to be very improbable, and for any party of men 
to rescue him by force was considered, in the then prostrate condition of 
the Irish National movement, utterly impossible. All male visitors were 
strictly forbidden. His wife and a friend of hers, a Miss McArdle, were 
the only outside visitors he was permitted to see. 

But hostility to British rule in Ireland is more deep-seated than the 
enemy will ever permit himself to believe, and the women of Ireland have 
always been not only as patriotic, but stronger in their devotion to their 
country than many of the men. To rescue from the clutches of the 
invading Briton any Irishman who, not recognizing the foreigner's rule 
or his laws, finds himself captured by the myrmidons of the foe for his 
hostility to their usurpation in Ireland, is looked upon as sacred. Mrs. 
Kirwan and Miss McArdle were in communication with the men outside, 
and hearing that Captain Kirwan was to be removed to Kilmainham in 
a day or two, it was urgent that some arrangements should be made to 
get him out of the hospital at once. On Sunday evening, while a young 
lady visitor was engaging the policeman on guard at the foot of the bed 
in conversation, Mrs. Kirwan placed under the mattress a suit of under- 
clothing and a loaded revolver. The underclothing was intended to 
replace the hospital garments which the wounded captain wore. In the 
hospital, as a patient for a pulmonary complaint which was considered 
incurable, was an Irishman named Murrin ; he was a member of the 
organization, and had been permitted to move about freely in the hospital 
before Kirwan's arrival, and as he was not suspected of National pro- 
clivities the British officials did not interfere with his movements. Murrin 
had reconnoitered to the best of his ability the avenues of escape ; and 
as the front of the building was more securely guarded, it was decided 
that on the first favorable moment an attempt would be made from the 
rear of the hospital. Monday evening was decided on, as every hour was 
precious. Word was sent outside to the men to be ready to get Kirwan 
away. The yard at the back of the hospital was divided from O'Keefe's 
nursery by a twelve-foot wall ; it was necessary to have a ladder to cross 
this wall. Murrin procured one which the lodgekeeper, an Orange rebel 
named Hodges, had charge of, and placed it ready in the yard for use. 
But on a later inspection Murrin found that Hodges had removed the 
ladder for use elsewhere, and the project had to be postponed till the 
next evening, Tuesday. The men outside were made aware of the delay. 
Next evening everything was as on the previous day. The ladder was 
placed ready by Murrin. A stratagem was adopted to get the policeman 
on guard at the foot of the bed away. He was complaining of not being 
well, and Kirwan induced him to go to the apothecary for medicine to 
relieve his complaint. As soon as the policeman had left, Kirwan, quick 
as lightning, changed his clothes. One of Kirwan's visitors, a handsome 
young girl, had engaged the policeman outside in the corridors in a 
flirtation, and he was earnestly engaged in conversation with his fair 
enchantress, when Kirwan, dressed in shirt, drawers, and in his stocking 
feet, stole quickly by, the loaded revolver in his hand ready for any 
emergency. The policeman's back was toward the captain, and he did 
not hear the almost noiseless footsteps of the retreating Kirwan. Before 
leaving the ward Kirwan lifted up one of the front windows to deceive 



RISING OF THE 5TH OF MARCH. 135 

the British. His ruse was successful ; when his departure was discovered 
it was believed he got out through the front of the hospital with the 
assistance of sympathizers outside, and a search in the neighborhood was 
rapidly instituted. 

In the meantime Kirwan and Murrin hurried to the rear of the hospi- 
tal, and to Murrin's horror and astonishment the ladder was again missing. 
Murrin seemed completely prostrate, and said there was treason some- 
where. " Never mind," said Kirwan, " it is do or die now ; escape I must, 
for I will not fall alive into British hands if I can." A shed that reached 
halfway up to the top of the wall met Kirwan's searching glance, and 
calling to Murrin to help him to reach the sloping roof, he succeeded in 
his endeavor. The excitement of the moment lent Kirwan strength ; he 
succeeded with some exertion in getting on the roof of the shed, but in his 
struggles he burst the bandages and re-opened his wounds, when blood 
began to flow. With apparent superhuman exertion he got on the wall 
and down into the adjoining Nursery grounds ; crossing these he came to 
a privit hedge with a ditch outside. He looked vainly for an opening. 
He ran breathlessly along the hedge until it terminated in a wall near 
which he found an opening into Heytesbury Street. By this time the 
hue and cry was over Dublin for his re-capture. He was fortunate in 
meeting his friends as pre-arranged, and they had a cab ready which 
quickly whirled him away from the hospital. This escape of Kirwan's 
took place on Tuesday, April 9, 1867, five weeks after the night of the 
''rising." The enemy offered a large reward for his apprehension, but he 
was with friends whom British gold could not weaken. He was success- 
fully smuggled over to Liverpool, and with the aid of friends who were 
supposed by the British to be above suspicion, he managed to get a pas- 
sage in a steamer to New York, where he resides at this time of writing. 
Captain Kirwan may be said to have been essentially a man of action. 
His quick perception and ready wit never failed him : His Irish career 
was more like romance than what is termed often very incorrectly dull 
and commonplace reality. He is a type of Irish Nationalist that will never 
wholly disappear from Ireland while a foreign flag floats in the country as 
an emblem of alien authority. The various scenes which took place 
over the island on that memorable Shrove-Tuesday night, 1867, in con- 
nection with the so-called " rising," it is not the purpose of this history to 
narrate. Other incidents in connection with the 5th of March "rising" 
demand our attention. 



CHAPTER IX. 
(1867.) 

LONDON ON THE BRINK OF REVOLUTION IRISH PLANS FOR FOMENTING 

THE REFORM MOVEMENT INTO AN INSURRECTIONARY CONFLAGRA- 
TION IN THE BRITISH METROPOLIS. 

The Reform Agitation — Threatened Revolution in England — English Reformers En- 
raged at Tory Policy — Irish Plans to Foment Insurrection — Reformers Refused Ad- 
mission to Hyde Park — The Irish Assault — I. R. B. Break the Park Railings — The 
Home Secretary's Indecision — Massey's Treason — Government Alarmed — Radical 
Reform Bill Introduced by the Tories — Resignation of Ministers — Panic in Tory 
Councils Abates — The English Reformers Grow more Exacting — Determination to 
Hold Monster Meeting in Hyde Park, May 6, 1867 — Government Proclaims the 
Meeting — Great Excitement — Fifteen Thousand Troops Ordered up from Alder- 
shot — Search for Colonel Thomas J. Kelly — His Capture Anxiously Looked for by 
the British Government — Twelve Thousand Special Constables Sworn in — Irish Revo- 
lutionists Pour into London — Thousands of I. R. B. in the Metropolis — Armed Prep- 
arations by the Irish to Begin Revolution — English Reformers Determined to Resist 
the Government — Plan of the I. R. B. Council in London — Government Frightened 
at News of Irish Arrivals in London — Complete Surrender of Tory Cabinet — Military 
Orders Countermanded at the Eleventh Hour — Reform Meeting Permitted in the 
Park — Peaceable Close of the Excitement — The Reform Bill Made More Radical and 
Hurried through Both Houses. 

Colonel Kelly, who was in England, took no active part in this 
abortive attempt at insurrection in Ireland. He was busily engaged in 
maturing a plan by which he hoped to bring about a democratic revolu- 
tion in England, starting the insurrection in London itself. The proba- 
bility of this great undertaking, causing an upheaval in London second 
only to the great French Revolution of 1789, seemed decidedly in Kelly's 
favor, and but for the treason of that contemptible coward Massey, it is 
difficult to reason out any other conclusion. It will be remembered by 
students of contemporary history that all England was in a ferment over 
the question of Reform of the electoral franchise, and that the seething 
fires of revolution was spreading over the land. One or two prominent 
men were agitating this question, and foremost among these was Mr. 
Edmond Beales, who soon after was rewarded by a Liberal Government 
with a snug sinecure, to remove him from the domain of republican agita- 
tion. The Liberal Government had been defeated in their attempt to bring 
in a Reform Bill, lowering the franchise and giving power to a largely 
increased number of the people to vote for representatives to sit in the 
Commons Chamber. This vote was brought about by a coalition between 
the Tories and a certain number of renegade Liberals. Adullamites they 
were called, the mugwumps of that period. The defeat by the aristo- 
crats of this popular democratic measure stirred up the populace to a con- 
dition of excitement very seldom occurring with phlegmatic John Bull. 
This was fanned into a flame by the fervent and ardent speeches of the 
great English tribune, John Bright, then a democrat of the democrats, and 
Mr. Gladstone, the defeated Minister, lent his powerful and eloquent voice 
to help on the agitation. 

John Bright and William Ewart Gladstone at this period were the 
idols of the English people, and when at a later period the wave of popu- 
lar enthusiasm wafted Mr. Gladstone to power, he induced Mr. Bright 
for tiie first time to accept office in his Cabinet, and after a great deal of 

136 



LONDON ON THE BRINK OF REVOLUTION. 137 

persuasion the great democrat yielded to the marvelous eloquence of the 
Liberal leader. From that time dates the departure of the great English 
tribune from the democratic principles of his life ; it was the commence- 
ment of his descent into Avernus, and he gradually became what he is at 
this period (1887), an aristocratic Whig. 

Behind Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, and completely unknown to 
these men, was a small body of English republicans, few in number but 
sufficient to become the nucleus of revolution during that exciting and 
favorable epoch. Extreme as these men were from an English standpoint, 
the idea of an appeal to arms was very remote, if not altogether out of 
their calculations, but the events were marching on quicker than even 
these English republicans dreamed. A meeting publicly announced to 
take place in Hyde Park was stopped by order of the Tory Government. 
Without absolutely proclaiming the meeting, they refused to permit the 
reformers to assemble in this public park. The gates were closed by 
order of the Tory Ministry. Large bodies of the Metropolitan police, 
under the command of Sir Richard Mayne, patrolled the park, armed only 
with their batons, as usual in London. 

The reformers were roused to a high pitch of indignation. They 
chafed under the defeat of the Russell Ministry, by the coalition of the 
aristocratic element in the House voting against the very moderate 
measure of reform which the Liberals had introduced. Mr. Gladstone, 
who was Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Com- 
mons in the Russell Cabinet, although he took part in the public agitation 
in favor of reform, did so in a conservative and constitutional manner. 
But Mr. Bright, although strictly within the limits of the constitution, 
was more outspoken ; he expressed his honest indignation at the reac- 
tionary tactics of the Tories, which inflamed the passions of the multitude. 
Those who had not the opportunity of mixing among the English people 
at that period could not have the faintest idea how powerful was the 
influence of John Bright with the masses. He electrified the reformers 
with his fiery eloquence. Next in influence after Mr. Bright was Mr. 
Gladstone, but the man who guided and directed the angry multitude, and 
who was the principal manipulator of the agitation, was an English 
lawyer, a Mr. Edmond Beales, a Radical of the Radicals. 

The news that Hyde Park was closed against the Reform meeting 
increased the public passion. Mr. Beales and the Reform agitators were 
determined to go on with the meeting, and refused to admit that the 
Derby Ministry was empowered by law to prohibit the gathering in the 
park. 

Earl Derby, the Prime Minister, called the Rupert of debate, was 
a Tory of the old school ; he was angry and indignant at the presump- 
tion of the people, and was determined to put his foot down and stop the 
encroachments of the plebeians on the sacred privileges of the upper 
classes. The leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the 
Exchequer was Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, a man who by his great abilities 
won his way into the exclusive ranks of Tory statesmen. He was as deter- 
mined as his chief, Lord Derby, in preserving the privileges of his order, 
but he was much more a Radical at heart than even his great rival Mr. 
Gladstone, and while anxious to deprive the masses of the franchise, he 
was careful to try and preserve a very liberal tone when addressing the 
people. 

The news that Mr. Beales and the workmen of London were deter- 
mined to enforce their right to enter Hyde Park and hold their demon- 
station there, while it outraged Lord Derby's ideas of the respect due by 
the masses to a government order, did not in the least annoy Mr. Disraeli. 
He knew the English masses, particularly the men who were foremost irt 



138 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the Reform agitation, better than Lord Derby, and concluded the whole 
affair would pass off peacefully ; that the Reformers would be satisfied at 
making a demonstration in front of Hyde Park and would then march to 
some other public place and hold their meeting, afterward testing the 
legality of the government decision in the law courts. 

Mr. Disraeli was in part correct, but there was an element that inter- 
fered and which upset that statesman's calculations, and this was the 
I. R. B. organization, ripe to take the field the year before to establish a 
republic in Ireland, and at that time waiting for the decision of its leaders 
and Stephens' promised help to embark in revolution. The Hyde Park 
Reform meeting was to take place on Monday, July 23, 1866. The Irish- 
men's sympathies were of course with the Reformers, and numbers of 
them were members of English Radical clubs, but the great question of 
Irish independence was as much hostile to the English masses as the 
English classes. This the Irish leaders in London knew well. But any 
disruption in England would have a tendency to weaken the power of 
the enemy in Ireland, and the I. R. B. London chiefs saw the time had 
come for the organization to do what it could to foment strife between the 
English parties for the benefit of Ireland. The men were suddenly 
ordered to take part in the coming struggle in Hyde Park, and the Irish 
concentrated in their thousands, armed with loaded revolvers and plenty 
of ammunition, to if possible commence a bloody fray between the people 
and the soldiery. 

The huge procession under the control of its leaders wound its way 
to Hyde Park, completely unconscious of the unlooked for assistance 
they were to receive from the Irish republicans. 

All the gates leading into the park were closed and a large force of 
police massed inside ; Sir Richard Mayne, the chief commissioner of 
police, sat on horseback at the entrance gate facing Hyde Park corner. 
The Reform leaders, after protesting in the name of the law against the 
illegal closing of the park gates, turned the head of the procession toward 
Trafalgar Square, where they purposed holding the meeting. Thousands 
of hand-bills were distributed among the multitude, informing them to 
assemble in Trafalgar Square. Mr. Disraeli was correct in his fore- 
knowledge of what course the English Reform leaders would take when 
they discovered that the authorities meant to enforce their order of pro- 
hibition to the Park. 

Meanwhile, the Irish circles, under the command of their officers, took 
up the positions assigned to them by their chiefs. They did not attempt 
to attack the enemy at the gates, where they were massed in force ; they 
took up three distinct positions at the Hyde Park railings, ready at the 
signal which their officers were to give them to force their way into the 
Park. These officers were acting under the control of a central authority. 
One of these bodies was stationed in Park Lane, another near the Marble 
Arch, the Oxford Street or upper side of the Park, and a third near 
Knightsbridge. The head of the Reform procession had not proceeded far 
on its return to Trafalgar Square, when the signal was given to the Irish, 
" Down with the railing." At this time immense crowds of people, sight- 
seers and agitators, were congregated round Hyde Park, when the Irish 
commenced to tug at the railings. The English crowd were at first irreso- 
lute. The perfection of organization was displayed at this crisis on the 
part of the Irish Republicans, and as the iron railings began to yield to 
the pressure and were loosening in the sockets a large number of the 
lookers on joined the men at the railings. In one place a passing dray 
was seized by the crowd and backed against the iron barriers. A very 
short time elapsed after the signal was given, when the Hyde Park rail- 
ings were demolished and a cheering, shouting crowd of English people 



LONDON ON THE BRINK OF REVOLUTION. 139 

rushed into the forbidden inclosure. That portion of the Reform pro- 
cession that had not left for Trafalgar Square followed. Their leaders, 
who were hurriedly summoned back, now entered the park and thou- 
sands of people flocked round the speakers. A series of affrays occurred 
in different parts of the park between the English people and the police ; 
stones were thrown freely and staves and batons used. The police made 
a number of arrests among the English mob, but not one of the I. R. B. 
men was arrested. These men kept together on the skirts of the crowd, 
waiting for the next part of the programme. It was expected by the 
Irish leaders that the fiery Tory earl would send the Guards, foot and 
mounted, to disperse the crowd, and then would come the hour to strike. 
On the advance of the military the men were to receive orders to open 
fire. 

The crowd kept pressing into the park ; like the storm waves of the 
angry ocean rushing and leaping in mighty majesty through a burst 
embankment, so leaped and rushed the stormy crowd of Englishmen 
through the gaps in the railings. As they mustered in their thousands 
inside the park they expended their indignation in cheering for Bright, 
Gladstone, and Beales. 

It was well for the peace of London that the Government took no 
measures to disperse the people. So sudden and unexpected was the 
action of the crowd that the authorities had not time to consult together. 
A company of the Grenadier Guards and a troop of Life Guards entered 
the park late in the evening, but they merely marched and counter- 
marched, making no effort to scatter the crowd. Had the military 
attempted by force to stop the meeting, nothing could have saved London 
from revolution. The members of the I. R. B., who mingled with the 
English crowd, outwardly indistinguishable from themselves, were armed 
and ready to obey their officers in the event of being attacked by the 
soldiers. They would most certainly have retaliated. This would be 
applying a torch to a powder barrel ; a terrific explosion would have been 
heard all over England. 

The weakness and timidity of the Tory Home Secretary saved 
London from a conflagration ; not that Mr. Walpole dreamed the danger 
was so imminent, but by hesitation and procrastination he delayed any 
action until the Reformers' meeting was held and the crowd dispersed. 
Before separating, the Reform meeting passed a strongly worded resolu- 
tion, condemning the action of the Ministry, and calling on them to 
resign their offices. 

The Irish leaders were careful to instruct their men to keep the 
knowledge of their assistance from the English Reformers. For, taking 
the British people en masse, they hate the Irish, and the mere thought of 
an Irish nation even with greater detestation than they do their own 
aristocrats. 

The day after the destruction of the Hyde Park railings was an angry 
day in English annals. The Tories were enraged at the inaction of the 
Home Secretary, and were it not that it would appear to be a further 
victory for the Reformers, Mr. Walpole would have gone down before the 
wave of Tory indignation as effectively as the park railings went down 
before the Irish and the Reformers. 

The English people having tasted power and the sweets of victory 
over the Tory Government's discomfiture, were becoming more uncom- 
promising, not that the British people thought of armed resistance, 
neither did the Government look forward to any such possibility. 

The agitation went on fiercely through the winter. In February, 
1867, a huge procession paraded through the streets of London. The 
Irish mingled in this procession and openly carried the American flag at 



140 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the head of the Poplar contingent, a significant hint of republican prin- 
ciples. The meeting, when done parading, assembled in the Agricultural 
Hall, Islington, where the prominent leaders of the English Radicals 
addressed the meeting. Resolutions were passed demanding manhood 
suffrage and vote by ballot, and the meeting dispersed after a severe 
condemnation of the Tory Reform resolutions introduced into the House 
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

This was the state of ferment all England was in while Colonel Kelly 
and a few devoted friends were planning to use this condition of the 
English agitation to further their object— the establishing of an inde- 
pendent Irish Republic. Behind these extreme English Republicans, 
without their knowledge, were men more extreme still. A foreign element 
was in their midst, men who were not only utterly indifferent as to which 
English party was successful in the seething cauldron of revolution that 
appeared to be approaching rapidly, but who would not grieve at what 
amount of ruin and destruction was brought upon the towns, cities, and 
manufactures of England by the strife of English faction. These men 
remembered their own ruined homes and their ravaged land, given over 
to the prey of every imaginable horror that satanic cunning could devise, 
and 'twas but what they thought just retribution if English cities were 
given to the flames. Irishmen born in England mixed freely with the 
Reformers and were members of English Radical clubs ; their sympathies 
were on the side of the English democracy in the issue between English 
classes, but their duty was to their own nation, for they were compelled 
to remember that these democrats were just as much the English enemy 
as were their aristocratic competitors, and Kelly's sole hope in using an 
English revolution was to liberate Ireland during the struggle in England, 
for if Ireland was not an independent nation at the time a British repub- 
lic became an established form of government, Ireland's hope of freedom 
would be as far off as ever. Irishmen remember the bloody days of 
Cromwell and the brutal massacres of women and babes by English 
republicans in Drogheda and Wexford. 

The liberation of a nation has nothing whatever to do with the form 
of government established by her conqueror. A German republic would 
not restore to France Alsace and Lorraine. This is written irrespec- 
tive of the disputed right or wrong of Germany's claim to these German- 
speaking provinces. A British republic would not restore India to the 
government of its own inhabitants, neither would they surrender Hong- 
kong to China nor Gibraltar to Spain. Irish Nationalists know very well 
that British politics have no relation whatever to the slightest change in 
Ireland's inexorable destiny so long as the British flag flies in their 
country, whether that foreign ensign is the emblem of a republic or a 
kingdom. 

Orders came from the I. R. B. council in London for Irish Nationalists, 
especially those of British birth, to mingle with the Reformers and take 
an aggressive attitude against the authorities, aiding and fomenting in 
every possible manner the commencement of an enieute. They did this 
effectively, and it was a small foretaste of what a dark future was before 
England had the agitation been permitted to continue. 

Public opinion in Britain was ranging itself into two hostile camps, 
and the spread of angry feelings against the Tory Government was fast 
becoming general all over England. The violation of Magna CJiarta 
and the right to public meeting was repeated again and again on public 
platforms all over the land. 

The London merchants and the moneyed classes in the Lowlands 
spoke of anarchy and communism, and called on the government to 
remain firm and not confer the franchise on the masses, opening the 



LONDON ON THE BRINK OF REVOLUTION. 141 

floodgates to the lowest strata to destroy the grand institutions of the 
country. Their cry was, " No compromise with the gutter politicians 
and demagogues, who are upsetting the country for their own selfish 
purposes." Some journals called for the authorities to preserve order by 
arresting the leading Reform agitators. Those people who unthinkingly 
called for strong government little dreamed of the volcano they were 
sleeping over. 

Colonel Kelly and the Irish council in London were maturing their 
plans to create a revolution in London to support the Irish insurgents in 
Ireland, when Massey was arrested at Limerick Junction. This man's 
poltroonery and cowardice made him an easy prey to the British officials, 
and when they were unearthing all news of Irish disaffection, to their 
horror and amazement they learned of the giant plot to involve England 
in revolution. 

Alarm and consternation filled the highest Government circles. The 
officials in Ireland who knew of Massey's testimony were ordered under 
the severest penalties to keep the information secret. 

A Cabinet council was hastily summoned to consider the grave con- 
dition of affairs. The Ministry were aghast, and shuddered with inward 
horror when they learned the deep, wide, and yawning chasm toward 
which they had driven the vehicle of state. They felt that they were tot- 
tering on its brink, and that care should be taken in retreating from their 
dangerous position. 

The minister who was capable of boldly facing the emergency was 
Mr. Disraeli. He determined that he would cut away every possible 
chance of giving the Irish any opportunity to disrupt English society by 
introducing a most radical reform bill. He had some difficulty in win- 
ning over the Premier, Lord Derby, to his views, but the imminent 
danger created by the Irish left that old Tory chieftain no alternative. 
Three of his colleagues Mr. Disraeli could not convince — General Peel, 
Secretary of War, Viscount Cranbourne, and Earl Carnarvon. These 
three ministers resigned their portfolios sooner than be responsible for 
Mr. Disraeli's measure. But still they confessed in Parliament that their 
views on the reduction of the franchise had undergone a radical change. 

The English public, Radicals and Conservatives, were surprised at the 
extraordinary difference of sentiment which the Government so rapidly 
displayed, for Lord Derby in the Lords and Mr. Disraeli in the Commons- 
announced a Reform Bill of a most liberal tendency. They dreaded 
leaving the subject over for future legislation. It was necessary to at 
once appease the English masses, knowing the dangerous element behind 
the reformers. 

To the astonishment of the world, the Tory Government of Britain 
made this great change of front ; mankind attributed this political revolu- 
tion to various other causes. The Ministry kept the real facts from pub- 
lic knowledge just as they are to-day (1887) playing a part by affecting 
ignorance of the real issue between the London Times and the Provin- 
cialists. To give either facts to the world would be to show the power 
and vastness of revolutionary plans and to elevate the ability and influ- 
ence of the Irish who are at war with them. The effect of publishing 
these important and far-seeing tactics on the part of the Irish would be 
to lower British prestige. They try to preserve this by burying such 
knowledge out of sight, and Irishmen in their anxiety for secrecy and the 
false policy of hiding facts at the wrong time, unconsciously help British 
diplomacy by their mistaken silence. 

The introduction of the Reform Bill by the Government elated the 
English Radical leaders. Those at the head of the agitation were 
satisfied that their bold front had paralyzed Tory opposition. By con- 



142 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

tinuing the agitation and insisting on the new bill being still further 
improved and many radical changes inserted in committee, they ex- 
pected a complete victory for their principles. These men never con- 
ceived the idea that the Irish Republicans were the great cause of alter- 
ing ministerial councils. Flushed with victory, they determined to try 
•another issue with the Government, and preparations were made for a 
monster procession and immense demonstration and public meeting in 
Hyde Park. This meeting was publicly announced to be held on Monday 
May 6, 1867. 

The British Cabinet held an important council oh the new challenge 
thrown down to them by the Reform agitators. They had crushed out, 
they thought, every vestige of active disaffection in Ireland and 
destroyed the revolutionary movement in that country, and from the 
reports brought to them they concluded that the Irish movement in Eng- 
land had become so utterly disorganized that they need not now consider 
any action of these people with the same gravity, more especially as they 
had by their bill, then in progress through the House, cut the ground 
for agitation from beneath the Reforrh leaders' feet. Thus reasoning, 
the Derby Ministry determined to make a stand against the agitation ; 
they at once decided to prohibit the meeting in Hyde Park and to use 
every power they could control to stop the Reform gathering. London 
was placarded next day with proclamations on which the Royal Arms 
were displayed, and beneath the Royal insignia were the words "God 
Save the Queen." Through her Ministers the Sovereign forbade the 
Hyde Park meeting and threatened with divers pains and penalties all 
undutiful and disloyal men who refused to obey these commands. 

This proclamation inflamed the passions of the English masses ; they 
were unanimous in their determination to uphold their leaders, and, come 
what may, they firmly resolved to attend the monster gathering, expect- 
ing, of course, that when the government saw that their resolutions were 
so firmly fixed they would, as on previous occasions, succumb, satisfied 
in the justice of their cause and the prestige of foregone victories. The 
reform leaders looked upon themselves as invincible. 

Meanwhile the British Government was anxiously looking out for the 
arrest of a leading Irish Nationalist. If it had him secure under lock 
and key it would feel less uneasy in facing the Reformers. This man, 
whom the enemy was so eager to capture, was Colonel Thomas J. Kelly. 
Both Massey and Corydon impressed upon the British the great impor- 
tance attached to this arrest, as he was one of the principal leaders con- 
ducting the Irish attempt at revolution in England. Massey gave an 
accurate description of his dress and appearance, also his London address 
near Tottenham Court Road, but Colonel Kelly was not to be caught 
napping. When the British detectives reached his lodgings they were 
informed that he had left for Paris to visit the Exposition. This was the 
message Kelly left at his lodgings when leaving. The Government felt 
satisfied that Kelly was in England, and was almost certain he was in 
London. Orders were sent to Scotland Yard to redouble their vigilance 
and capture the famous Fenian leader. The detectives were rewarded 
one morning by the capture of an I. R. B. centre for whom they were on 
the lookout ; this man, who had had a prosperous business in London 
and which he lost through his devotion to the cause of his native land, 
had been suffering many privations trying to avoid arrest. The detec- 
tives knew that he was certain of being convicted for his treason — as they 
thought it — and that very probably a life sentence awaited him. They 
were well aware he could place them on Colonel Kelly's track, so they 
commenced fencing with him before putting the direct question as to his 
assisting them to capture Kelly. This centre was a shrewd and trust- 



LONDON ON THE BRINK OF REVOLUTION. 143 

worthy man; the exigencies of his position somewhat sharpened his intellect 
and he almost knew what was running in the minds of the detectives as 
soon as they opened the conversation. He affected great hatred for 
Colonel Kelly and other leaders, and expressed a wish that they would 
be captured and punished according to their deserts. The enemy fell 
into the trap so skillfully laid by the London centre, and told him that 
they were on Kelly's track and hoped to soon hunt him down, and solicited 
this centre's assistance, promising him rewards and freedom if he would 
aid in Kelly's capture. The Irishman told them he could not mingle 
among the men to procure the requisite information without a new outfit, 
as his garments were not fit to go anywhere. This demand for assistance 
confirmed the detectives in the Irishman's earnestness ; they supplied him 
with a new outfit and gave him ten sovereigns to meet all necessary 
expenses. This centre was no sooner free from the enemy's police than he 
was eager to communicate with Kelly and let him know how anxious the 
enemy were for his capture. He called on a brother centre, who found 
out where the colonel could be seen, when the two men waited on him. 
The released centre told Kelly the enemy had been to his lodgings and 
were looking for him, that they had an accurate description of his dress- 
and appearance, and cautioned him to be doubly careful ; he threw down 
on the table before Kelly the ten pounds given him by the enemy, at the 
same time exclaiming : " Take them away, they are burning my pocket, 
Colonel." Kelly knew the loyalty and patriotism of this brave Irishman. 
He told him he would give him every opportunity to give the detectives, 
useful information, but a little late, so that they would be kept engaged 
looking for him until the I. R. B. could get the centre away. He also 
thought to himself it would employ their time and throw the enemy off 
the scent until the 6th of May had passed. 

Colonel Kelly from this day forth changed his lodgings almost daily, 
and when he was leaving for another abode he communicated with this 
centre, who gave the detectives the information. In each case they 
found their much sought-for man had been there, but was fled. This 
made them certain the centre was seriously helping them. The organiza- 
tion succeeded in getting this centre out of the country, and when the 
Government heard through Scotland Yard of this Irish centre's duplicities 
(for when he disappeared the detectives saw that they were completely 
hoodwinked by the Irishman whom they thought they had purchased),, 
they grew somewhat uneasy and began to fear that Kelly was engaged in 
some new plot. 

As the time approached for the monster Hyde Park demonstration, 
the business people of London became alarmed. Although they did not 
fear bloodshed, they were anxious that there should be no disturbance, 
and of course Irish revolutionary interference never once dawned upon 
their intelligence. 

Not so the Government ; but from what they could glean from their 
numerous spies, they considered all attempts on the part of the Irish to 
create a row would be crushed out by the force that they were determined 
to concentrate in and around the park. 

The meetings in the English Radical clubs grew more angry every 
night. Irish speakers born in England and speaking with the local 
accent of their nativity, did their best to lash into storm the usually 
phlegmatic English workingmen. 

These speeches were noted by the press and attributed to the 
Reformers ; but at this time many of the Britons had been inspired by 
these addresses and followed in the same strain. The London Times of 
Saturday, May 4, 1867, two days before the proposed meeting, thus- 
comments on the situation : 



144 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

" On this occasion the league expressly declare that they do not and 
will not ask the consent of anybody. They announce that they will repel 
force by force, and they summon the lowest classes from all parts of 
London by intimating that there is to be tumult and disorder. No min- 
ister would be worthy to serve the Queen if he allowed the rights of 
the Crown, which are really the rights of peaceful inhabitants of London, 
to be overridden in such a manner. . . 

" Mr. Gladstone said last night, ' Whatever be the intention of her 
Majesty's Government with respect to the administration and execution 
of the law in the exercise of its duty, my most earnest advice to those 
whom the proclamation concerns, is to conform themselves to the notifi- 
cation it contains.' " 

The time was nearing fast when the collision between these angry and 
hostile portions of the English community and the military element 
might possibly take place. The crisis they had tried to facilitate and 
develop was now upon the Irish leaders, and they made their preparations 
to meet the coming contingency and if possible make certain that 
revolution would be born at the approaching monster Hyde Park 
demonstration. 

All over Britain orders were sent out to the I. R. B. circles to have 
ready all the volunteers they could procure by Saturday, May 4, 1867, for 
a special duty and on active service. Several thousand men volunteered. 
They concluded it was another insurrection that was preparing, but they 
asked no questions. They were ready to obey their orders, hoping some 
good results would ensue for the Irish cause. 

The British Government called a consultation of military officers of 
high rank, and a decision was come to as to the suppressing of the meet- 
ing and by an overwhelming force to overawe either the Irish republicans 
or the criminal classes in any attempt to break the peace. Fifteen 
thousand troops were under orders to come to London from Aldershot. 
Two batteries of artillery were included in these. The cavalry of this 
force reached London on Saturday evening. The rest of the forces were 
to leave on Sunday evening and early Monday morning. 

On Saturday twelve thousand special constables were sworn in ; this 
force was expected to be increased to twenty thousand by Monday, the 
day of the threatened demonstration. The Grenadiers, Coldstreams, 
and Scots Fusileer Guards were confined to their barracks ready to sup- 
port the coming Aldershot army, and with these were the Life Guards 
and Royal Horse Guards, ready to assist in preserving the peace. Lon- 
don was agitated as it never was before ; the citizens were astounded 
when they heard of the large army the Government meant to bring to 
Hyde Park. Had it been to resist a Russian or French invasion they 
could not have made more gigantic preparations. 

When the Reform leaders heard of the extraordinary and unusual 
military display about to be made by the Government, they smiled with 
scorn and contempt at what they considered a game of brag, and felt 
certain that their meeting would take place without the slightest need of 
any force whatever. If told that the Government was preparing against 
any possible disturbance by Irish Revolutionists they would have 
laughed with derision at a government that would deem it necessary to 
move so large a force of military to suppress an insignificant handful of 
men, who could be easily overcome by the police if they attempted any 
interference. But the Government preserved its secret, and the Eng- 
lish leaders of the agitation considered the Government was absurdly 
foolish in its proposed measures. 

The I. R. B. Council, fully alive to the important opportunity that 
both English parties were offering Ireland, and learning what a large 



LONDON ON THE BRINK OF REVOLUTION 145 

force they would have to encounter, made every possible provision to 
offer a strong and determined resistance. All the rifles belonging to each 
circle, with their ball cartridges, were placed as near the scene of hostili- 
ties as the organization could control friendly depots, from which they 
could be at once procured, while the fight was in progress, as the battle 
was to be opened by the fire of their revolvers. On Saturday morning 
orders were received for the I. R. B. volunteers to proceed to London, 
there to get orders for active service ; that these men were not to arrive 
later than Monday morning, every man to provide himself with a revolver 
and as many cartridges as convenient. These arms the Council knew 
were already in the possession of the men. 

The Irish plan of campaign was to skirt the English crowd, keeping 
the English masses between them and the foe ; as the British military bore 
down on what they considered a mob, the Irish were to open fire all 
along the line, a signal to be given when the first volley was to be dis- 
charged. This would be certain to bring on a sanguinary fray ; the 
military would return the fire, killing and wounding English and Irish 
alike. Passion would be sure to animate the raging crowd. The Eng- 
lishman, slow to cross the Rubicon which divides agitation from revolu- 
tion, would have taken the fatal step, and with the obstinacy and tenacity 
of the Anglo-Saxon was not likely to surrender tamely. To give force 
and object to their cause the Irish would then begin shouts for the 
British republic, and call out John Bright as their leader. The great 
tribune's name would be received with shouts by the English masses ; 
this was the time considered proper to bring in the fresh forces armed 
with rifles and bayonets to make the combat more deadly. In the mean- 
time several centres for insurrection and destruction were selected in the 
city and other parts of London. It will be remembered that this huge 
metropolis contains more than one million of criminals of both sexes, 
who, reckless of anything but plunder, would soon seek an opportunity 
to glut their appetites. Arrangements were made to give these human 
ghouls every possible chance to enrich themselves. It can be imagined 
what havoc and destruction would ensue, and what devastation this 
army of looters would create in a city teeming with the world's wealth 
and filled with squalor and poverty. 

The red demon of war was to be 'let loose in this modern Babylon, 
but all this scene of blood and pillage could not equal the fearful horrors 
that these people's accursed rule brings to Ireland, turning that smiling 
land as they are this very hour into a huge charnel house. 

No greater or more powerful combination was ever formed to destroy 
not only British rule in Ireland, but to annihilate aristocratic supremacy 
in Britain. 

Late on Saturday night a deputation of Conservative citizens waited 
on Mr. Walpole, the Home Secretary, to endorse the action of the Gov- 
ernment, and to offer them any support needed. The deputation also 
presented a numerously signed address approving the Government's 
determination not to permit the meeting in Hyde Park on Monday. Mr. 
Spencer H. Walpole thanked the deputation on behalf of the Government, 
assuring these gentlemen that the Government would remain firm, certain 
of the support of all law-abiding subjects of her gracious Majesty. 

Saturday night the I. R. B. men commenced to pour into London, 
and on Sunday morning the Irish were coming into the metropolis in 
great numbers as also were a numerous addition to the Reformers. Late 
Saturday night special news came to the Home Office ; the spies that were 
watching Irish districts over England and Scotland reported great prep- 
arations and excitement among the Irish. As this news reached the 
Ministers, they grew alarmed. Fresh rumors of excitement in Ireland, 



i 4 6 I ill: IRISH NATIONAL [NVINCIBLES. 

although groundless, excited fear. A few days previous Colonel 
Thomas f. Bourke had delivered his soul-inspiring address from the dock 
and the trials were causing excitement in Dublin. 

Fresh messengers brought alarming tidings ; so universal was the move- 
ments oi the Irish that it proved perfection of organization. There was 
some move on the chessboard which the I. 1\. B. chieftains meant to 
take ; the Ministers naturally thought of the Hyde Park meeting. Colonel 
Kelly was still at large ; the Government was certain there was a fresh 
plot hatching ill respect to Monday's parade ; Massey's former information 
made them nervous. A hurried meeting of Ministers was called for that 
Sunday, and on discussing the gravity of the situation they felt the neces- 
sity of surrender. There was no alternative. Either permit the Reform 
meeting, or else take the possible chances of bloodshed, revolution, 
anarchy, and chaos. It was a humiliating and disastrous defeat, but the 
bitter pill had to be swallowed. Orders were sent to Aldershot to stop 
the departure of the soldiers. Word was sent to the public press that the 
Government learned that to meet in Hyde Park was not against the law, 
and that they had withdrawn their opposition. 

The Government had to wear sackcloth and ashes; the Reformers 
crowed with delight. London and all Britain were stupefied. What 
meant this contemptible and cowardly surrender at the eleventh hour? 
Receiving deputations late on Saturday night with a determination to 
disperse anv meeting in Hyde Park, swearing in special constables, and 
taking warlike preparations, and now this lame and silly apology for not 
taking action. The press and people were astonished ; even the Radicals 
wondered at this sudden and unexpected collapse, for the great Tory 
Ministry to show such vacillation and weakness, was a proceeding unheard 
of with Conservative administrations. Rut although many strange specu- 
lations filled the public mind, no one ever thought o( the real cause. 

London had gone through a terrible crisis all unknown to the victor- 
ious agitators. The London Times and all the journals that had sup- 
ported the Ministry in their opposition to the Reformers were completely 
surprised at the Government surrender. Knowing nothing of the 1. R. 
B. movement in England they never suspected the real reason for Lord 
Derby's rapid retreat. The London Times thus comments on the situa- 
tion in its issue of Monday, May o: 

"•In our hands the doctrine of non-intervention has been developed 
into that of non-resistance.' So said a member of the party at present 
in office, and true to its own self-imposed law of action — the law of the 
weakest we suppose it must be called — Government has abandoned its 
opposition to the meeting in llvde Park, which is to be surrendered this 
evening to King Mob. It is not in our power, and certainly it is far 
from our wish, to dispute the soundness of the discretion which has 
tempered Ministerial valor. To all who contemplate the possibilities of 
the crisis, and the capacity of the metropolitan mob for almost any kind 
of mischief the prospect last Saturday was gloomy indeed. . . . 

" Mr. Beale and Ids colleagues will reign in Hyde Lark this evening, 
and may be considered the actual government of the country. Constitu- 
tional cynicism and foreboding has been justified by a further descent in 
the downward course of ministerial abnegation. The Government, which 
was in too emphatic a sense the other day on the floor of the House, is 
now on the turf of llvde Lark, and where next it is impossible to say. . . 
" We have endeavored to describe our mixed feelings on this occasion. 
Having screwed ourselves up to a crisis, not without danger, and a 
determination, which it was simple loyalty to accept from the persons 
charged with the maintenance of public peace and security, we find all 
at once that the effort has been wasted. Our feelings will not only be 



LONDON ON THE BRINK OF REVOLUTION. 147 

thoroughly understood, but actually shared, by every respectable house- 
holder iu Loudon, east, west, north and south, and by we know not how 
many thousand friends of order who have offered to be sworn in as 
special constables." 

The Thunderer of Printing House Yard expressed opinions which 
were echoed and re-echoed over the United Kingdom of Britain. Not 
having the key to the mystery the British public were surprised at the 
incomprehensible conduct of the Tory Government. What placed the 
course of the Ministry in the worst light was their great preparations to 
enforce their authority and to fulfill the demands called for by the Royal 
Proclammation, and after swearing in thousands of special constables. 
The Home Secretary, receiving a deputation near midnight on Saturday, 
was at that hour fully determined to enforce Ministerial authority, and 
then when a large portion of the troops were on the ground and govern- 
ment preparations apparently complete, a Cabinet meeting is held on 
Sunday — in itself an unheard of thing — and the Queen's Government col- 
lapsed. There was great speculation as to what was the actual cause of 
these extraordinary proceedings, but the real reason for the Government's 
panic was never suspected by the people, The Times in a subsequent 
issue makes these comments: 

"The public will hear with surprise, and perhaps also with no little 
discontent, that the Government has at the last moment resolved to permit 
the Hyde Park demonstration. . . . 

"Messrs. Beales, Bradlaugh & Co., with all their colleagues of the 
Reform League, have carried their point, and the result of their reiterated 
defiance of the Government has been, as we see, that the Government has 
thought fit to give in. . . . 

"Crowds of special constables were sworn in last Saturday and pro- 
vided with staves ; as many as from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand 
were expected to be sworn in to-day. Re-enforcements were under orders 
from Aldershot. . . . 

"The military commanders were consulted and a sort of plan of 
operations resolved upon for the park, in case the police should be found 
inadequate to the duty of maintaining the peace. In the course of 
yesterday all the mounted police that could be withdrawn from the 
suburban districts were draughted into the Metropolitan Barracks, while 
the constabulary themselves received their orders to assemble in large 
masses at assigned points in the park. The credit of standing firmly to 
their purpose certainly remains with the Reform League." 

What was behind the Reform League was the cause of Ministerial 
surrender — the men of the race they met at Fontenoy and Oulart 
Hill, and which they are destined to meet yet in a final deadly struggle, 
when the flag of Britain will be forever pulled down in Ireland. 

The new Reform Bill was deepened and broadened sufficiently to 
satisfy the most extreme British Radical in the House. It was revolu- 
tionary compared to the moderate and cautious measure introduced by 
Mr. Gladstone. Even some of the Liberal members were astounded at 
the democratic nature of the measure. The Government felt the necessity 
of passing the bill for the sake of the peace of England ; it was like 
legislating while a hostile army was encamped in their midst demanding 
the Reform Act or else 

Mr. Lowe, afterward Mr. Gladstone's Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
denounced the measure as socialistic, and termed it " a leap in the dark." 
Lord Cranbourne, who had left the Ministry in consequence of this bill, 
had a serious quarrel with Mr. Disraeli over parts of the measure which 
he denounced ; this peer is at this date Marquis of Salisbury and Premier 
of Britain. Mr. Disraeli, in replying to him, called Cranbourne the 



148 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

master of " flouts and jeers." The bill was termed a red republican 
measure. By tact and mysterious whisperings the Reform Bill was 
engineered through the Commons, the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
having to keep his own followers well in hand, for they were all disgusted 
and alarmed at the new sweeping measure which so widely enlarged the 
franchise ; the peers passed the bill, the most democratic measure that 
ever passed the British parliament. 

The English people little knew that they were indebted to the Irish 
revolutionists for household suffrage and a lodger franchise, which was 
only one step removed from the manhood suffrage of a democratic 
republic — and this extraordinary measure so strangely introduced and 
passed by a Tory party that had defeated a conservative bill a short time 
previous when the Liberals were in.ofiice. 

Thus closed the great agitation for reforms that so nearly convulsed 
England, and threatened to re-enact in London in 1867 the most exag- 
gerated horrors and atrocities which monarchical writers have ever 
depicted during the French revolution. How great things are changed 
by simple events ! The treason of the despicable Massey saved London 
for a few years longer from the lurid blaze of insurrection, which might 
have altered the condition of British and Irish politics by the whirlwind 
•of revolution. 



CHAPTER X. 

(1867.) 

" erin's hope " expedition from America — vessel with arms, ammu- 
nition, AND MILITARY OFFICERS OFF THE IRISH COAST. 

"Erin's Hope" Expedition — The Volunteers Sail for Ireland — Captain Cavanagh's 
Sealed Dispatches — Easter Sunday at Sea — Re-naming the Vessel — Hoisting the 
Irish National Flag, the Sunburst — Saluting the Standard — Scene on Deck — Colonel 
Tressilian's Ballad, " The Green Flag Now Waves" — Off the Irish Coast — Proposed 
Attack on Sligo — Colonel Rickard O. S. Burke Comes Aboard — Rendezvous at Cork — 
Debarkations off Waterford — Captured by the Enemy — " Erin's Hope " Pursued by 
British Cruisers — Safe Return to New York. 

When the news of the 5th of March rising reached America, the Irish 
people here were in a condition of great anxiety as to the result. The 
F. B. determined to organize a relief expedition. A special messenger 
was sent here early in February, asking for arms and war munitions 
to be sent promptly, as the men in the gap meant fight. The cry of 
wolf had been sounded so often that the men in the States were rather 
incredulous. The once powerful American organization had frittered 
away its strength in dissensions and procrastination, all of which would 
never have taken place but for the fault of the C. O. I. R. not placing 
the men in the gap on the field and commencing the struggle. But when 
they read in the public papers that Ireland had "risen" against her 
oppressor, a feeling of desperation permeated the circles and the cry was, 
" Send help to Ireland at once ! " The leaders in America were as ener- 
getic as possible under the circumstances, but were much shorn of power 
to help as they would have wished. 

The F. B. issued an order calling on the different circles for volunteers 
to go to Ireland — one man from each circle. It was indispensable he 
should be a military man ; those who had seen service and held com- 
mands during the war to receive the preference of selection. At this 
time there was much speculation and talk in different Irish circles as to a 
fleet of ironclads to convey arms, accouterments, and war munitions to 
Ireland. The strength of the organization and its power was much 
exaggerated. Like its sister organization in Ireland, its strength culmi- 
nated in October, 1865. The mock government, President, Senate, and 
Moffat Mansion not alone wasted its resources, but convinced all think- 
ing minds that the cause was hopeless that had such leaders. 

The call for volunteers to go to Ireland was promptly answered ; 
several hundred men sent in their names. After careful selection some 
forty men were chosen ; these received orders to hold themselves in 
instant readiness for embarkation. The men selected were considered 
suitable to partly officer one or two brigades. Every branch of the ser- 
vice was represented in the ranks of these volunteers. The Fenian 
Brotherhood understood that these men were but the advance guard 
of Irish-American assistance to their struggling brothers in Ireland. 
Another and much larger expedition was promised, and there is not the 
smallest doubt that had the men in Ireland been able to have taken the 
field and held it for any time that enormous help, both of men and war 
munitions, would have poured into the Green Isle. This would have been 

149 



150 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the spontaneous offering of the Irish race, not the mere work of an 
organization. But without the organization this assistance could not be 
intelligently given. The Irish- Americans were in great suspense waiting 
for authentic news from Ireland, for they did not believe the information 
which filtered through British channels. They were sure there had been 
several skirmishes, and possibly a general engagement with the invader's 
troops. They were under the impression that there had been a " rising," 
while in fact it was but an imperfect attempt to countermand an order to 
"rise," and but few localities were represented in proportion to even 
the decaying powers of the I. R. B. in Ireland. 

The utmost secrecy was preserved at Fenian Brotherhood headquarters 
relative to this approaching expedition. The men told off were kept in 
ignorance up the last moment as to the details of the expedition. At 
last, on the morning of the 12th of April, these men, in obedience to 
orders, met at an assigned rendezvous in Grand Street, and from thence 
were conducted on board a tugboat, which in due time conveyed them 
to the vessel on which they were to make this hazardous voyage across 
the ocean, to brave a thousand dangers to try and succor their brave 
countrymen, exposed, as they thought, to all the vicissitudes of a revolu- 
tionary war in their half-armed condition. These gallant Irish-American 
soldiers were prepared to face the risk of falling into the hands of the 
enemy before touching the Irish shore. 

Great was the disappointment of the men when they saw the vessel 
that was to convey them to Ireland. They had expected to see a large 
ironclad that could offer fight in the event of meeting with the enemy at 
sea. Unpleasant was the reaction when a small brigantine of about 350 
tons burden was the craft oh which this mere handful of men were put on 
board. The brave fellows thereupon concluded that they were fore- 
doomed, and came to look upon the voyage as one that must inevitably 
result in failure and possibly disaster. But there was no help for it ; 
there was nothing for it now but to bravely face the dangers as cheerfully 
as possible and put to sea, which was done. 

The name of this craft was the Jacmel Packet. This name was after- 
ward changed. She was from a maritime point of view a pirate craft. 
She left port with false clearance papers. 

The Jacmel proved a poor sailor, but such was the ardor of the men 
who were determined to aid their comrades at home to rally for a final 
stand against the foe, that these gallant Irish-American volunteers felt 
that nothing would daunt them. A cheery feeling of hope rose in their 
souls that they would be in time to contribute their mite to the insurgent 
Irish soldiers battling for freedom. There was more than the military 
success of the expedition at stake ; the men's honor and sense of duty 
impelled them to brave all, and sink or swim the danger must be faced. 
They knew that death awaited them in some shape, if not on the ocean 
certainly on shore, but they hoped that the Omnipotent would bless their 
endeavors, and if death was their decree, that it should be a soldier's 
grave in Ireland, and that their dying ears should be gladdened by hear- 
ing the shouts of victory as r their gallant countrymen drove back the 
invader in humiliation, defeat, and destruction. Last, though not least, 
another powerful motive animated them. It had become a maritime 
maxim that, owing to Britain's great fleet and the system of coast guard 
stations, no vessel of a hostile character could make a landing at any point 
of the Irish coast without being run down and captured ; nay, that a bird 
could hardly alight on shore seaward without having her flight noted. 
Well, this fallacy, at all events, was exploded in the most practical 
manner, as three different landings were made at night, and on different 
occasions, some in answer to what appeared to be signals. 




CAPTAIN JOHN F, CAVANAGH, U. S. N. 
Naval commander of the packet Erin's Hope. 



"ERIN'S HOPE" EXPEDITION FROM AMERICA. 151 

Sealed orders had been given to the sailing master, Captain John F. 
Cavanagh, a brave and worthy officer, who had served in the U. S. 
Navy. These sealed dispatches were not to be broken until the vessel 
had been three days out to sea. It was then learned that the brigantine 
was to sail for the western coast of Ireland, where a delegate would hail 
them from shore, signals to that effect having been agreed upon. This 
was one of the sealed dispatches : 

"New York City, April 12, 1867. 
"Sir : You will proceed with the vessel under your command to Sligo 
Bay, on the coast of Ireland, where you may safely land your cargo and pas- 
sengers. You will use every precaution to insure their safe delivery, and 
if possible, after you disembark the men and land the cargo, you will 
return at once with your vessel to New York. But if you should see no 
chance of escaping with her, destroy her, if practicable, so that she may 
not fall into the hands of the enemy. You will in all exigencies that arise 
during the voyage use your own judgment. God bless and speed you. 

" Yours Fraternally, 

" John Powell. 
"Captain John F. Cavanagh, 

" Chief of Naval Affairs, F. B., 
" At Sea." 

On Easter Sunday morning, April 21, 1867, there was an unusual stir 
on board the Jacjnel Packet. The ship was about to be re-named, and the 
vessel, with all ceremony, put into commission in the service of the Irish 
Republic. The cases of uniforms on board were opened and the volun- 
teers put on their military clothing and fully equipped stood ready on 
deck to salute the raising of the flag. Captain John Cavanagh had issued 
orders for those under his immediate command to muster on deck for 
this momentous occasion. Lieutenant William Sweetman and ensign 
O'Neill came on deck, where all the Irish-American soldiers and ship's 
crew were ready assembled ; they brought with them the Irish National 
flag, which was attached to the color halyards. The artillery on board 
■was loaded with blank cartridge and the firing party got into position. 
Captain Cavanagh took the quadrant and directed it to the sun. The 
morning, which had been dark and gloomy, grew rapidly brighter, and as 
it neared noon the sun shone out with splendor and the deep blue waves 
dancing with sunbeams, that leaped like diamonds from the glistening 
Avaves, animated and helped to stir the adventurous voyagers to enthu- 
siasm. When in lat. 43 n' and long. 55 52', at twelve o'clock to the 
second, the flag flew like lightning to the mainmast, and as it spread out 
its green folds to greet the sea and sky there gleamed the immortal sun- 
burst in the centre, Ireland's national banner fluttering over the waves ; 
on this flag was inscribed : " Presented to the Tara Circle by the ladies 
of Brooklyn, July 5, 1865." 

As the Irish Republican banner fluttered from the masthead, it was 
greeted with joy and delight by the fifty Irishmen on board. The 
cannon thundered out in salute, and the present arms to the old flag of 
an ancient and warlike race was followed by enthusiastic cheering. The 
men that saluted the national standard of their country and race were 
voyaging to carry that flag where cannon and rifles, shotted by the 
British enemy, would be directed in hostility against their banner and the 
men who were prepared to die in its defense. 

Glorious emblem of an unconquerable race ! all that the flag 
symbolizes to the brave soldiers of every land is doubly yours, for the 
Irish heart throbs with tumultuous emotions at the thought of seeing your 



152 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

emerald folds flashing out the sunburst at the head of an Irish army on 
Irish soil ! The mountains, the rivers, the valleys, the lakes, and the 
forests would almost become animated with enthusiasm if this long, long 
looked for hour of triumph would come to grand old Innisfail ! The 
honor of their flag is doubly dear to the Irish soldier, because too oft it 
" has been down in the dust and ashamed to be seen." Those who think 
that they can make Ireland a willing province of the enemy's empire of 
plunder, and decked with the bastard nationality, miscalled Home Rule, 
and surrender the nation's flag and the nation's independence to the 
honor of politicians, know little of the sentiments that animate the Irish 
heart. When Irishmen gaze on the flag of Britain it is with scorn and 
hatred ; to accept that detested emblem — filled with the memory of 
generations of bloodshed and rapine in Ireland as elsewhere — as their 
own national flag, which would be the outcome if this abortion named 
" Home Rule " could be successful, would be to expect a revolution in 
national and patriotic feeling that would be a marvelous phenomenon. 

The Jaanel Packet was re-named the Erin's Hope, amid the cheers of 
the Irish soldiers and the rattle of small arms and the salute of artillery. 
The hoisting of the sunburst was celebrated on board the Erin's Hope by 
the gallant voyagers to the best of their ability ; what they lacked in 
being able to honor the day to the best of their heart's desires, they made 
up in light-hearted gayety and enthusiasm. Colonel Tressilian, one of 
the Irish soldiers on board, composed a special ballad for the occasion to 
the air of the " Star Spangled Banner." Annexed are two verses : 

THE GREEN FLAG NOW WAVES. 

What is that which we see from the mainmast afloat ? 

It never was seen before on the ocean. 
And what means that volley and wild Irish shout ? 

It must be the war cry of patriot devotion. 
Now it kisses the gleam of the Easter-day beam, 

Its sunburst is shrouded in emerald sheen ; 
The flag of old Ireland that floats o'er the waves, 
And her sons and her daughters shall no longer be slaves. 

Then fling forth your banner from hamlet and cot, 
Let the slogan go forth, 'tis the war cry of freedom. 

From Liberty's cradle by Irishmen brought, 

While thousands shall follow the few who now lead 'em. 

Then away with all fears, drown your sorrows in cheers, 
For the brave " Irish exiles " will battle for years ; 

Till the flag of old Ireland shall float o'er the waves, 

And her sons and her daughters no longer are slaves. 

The hoisting of the flag was one bright day of enjoyment to these 
adventurous patriots, and one which the survivors of that gallant expedi- 
tion will remember forever. It has often occurred to Irish Nationalists 
that whenever their countrymen celebrate Irish national events in their 
adopted country, that although they fly the green flag in their free Ameri- 
can home, it is seldom if ever the Irish national flag that is displayed, 
although such is the intention of those who celebrate these events. The 
flag usually and indeed invariably displayed is the Munster banner, con- 
taining the arms of that patriotic province, the harp, around which 
they wreathe the Irish shamrock. The sunburst on a green ground is 
the Irish national emblem. Perhaps it would be well if the arms of the 
four provinces quartered in the corner, like the stars in the American 
banner, were added. This would place the harp of Munster, the red 
hand of Ulster, the three glaives of Connaught, and the three crowns of 
Leinster on the national flag, making the Irish standard contain a union 



"ERIN'S HOPE" EXPEDITION FROM AMERICA. 153 

jack, in the left corner, emblematical of the union of the four provinces 
in one independent nation, the only union Irishmen seek. 

But it would more worthily honor the Irish flag not to fly it, in any 
foreign nation, even a friendly one, until it can be raised in triumph over 
the ruins of Dublin Castle and over the razed foundations of the Yeomen's 
Parliament in College Green. When the sunburst of Ireland can flutter 
over a free nation, won by successful revolution and the complete defeat 
of the foreign invader, then Ireland's war-worn veterans can proudly 
honor the flag they fought for, and which was their beacon to guide 
them to victory. 

The Erin's Hope was speeding over the waves as quickly as her gal- 
lant commander could sail his vessel. She carried the following officers 
to lead the insurgent Irish at home to battle with the British foe : 

Brigadier General James E. Kerrigan, Infantry, commanding the 
detachment ; Brigadier General W. J. Nagle, Infantry, second in com- 
mand ; Brigadier General John Warren, Infantry, third in command ; 
Brigadier General George Whelan, Cavalry. 

Colonel I. R. Tresilian, Engineers ; Colonel Philip Dougherty, 
Infantry ; Colonel Patrick Dunn, Cavalry. 

Lieutenant Colonel James Prendergast, Infantry. 

Captain M. J. Green, Infantry ; Captain Augustine E. Costello, 
Infantry ; Captain J. J. Hasley, Zouaves ; Captain Jeremiah M. Buckley, 
Infantry ; Captain Andrew Leonard, Infantry ; Captain W. Millar, 
Infantry ; Timothy Horan, Infantry. 

Lieutenant W. J. Downing, Zouaves ; Lieutenant Robert Kelly, 
Zouaves ; Lieutenant M. J. Fitzgibbon, Artillery ; Lieutenant W. E. 
Nugent, Infantry ; Lieutenant M. W. Walsh, Artillery ; Lieutenant A. 
Downing, Cavalry ; Lieutenant J. P. Murray, Infantry ; Lieutenant P. 
Roach, Artillery ; Lieutenant P. Nugent, Zouaves ; Lieutenant P. Crogan, 
Zouaves ; Lieutenant J. O'Connor, Zouaves. 

Second Lieutenant Daniel Lee, Zouaves ; Second Lieutenant Laurence 
Doyle, Zouaves ; Second Lieutenant Michael Fitzgerald, Zouaves ; Second 
Lieutenant John Rooney, Zouaves ; Second Lieutenant William Sheehan, 
Zouaves ; Second Lieutenant James Coffee, Zouaves ; Second Lieutenant 
John Mangin, Zouaves ; Second Lieutenant John O'Brien, Zouaves ; 
Second Lieutenant J. O'Shea, Zouaves. 

There are a few names of the volunteers omitted from this list. The 
ship's crew consisted of : 

Captain John F. Cavanagh, commanding ; Lieutenant William Sweet- 
man, Irish coast pilot ; Ensign Henry O'Neill., second officer ; Thomas 
Hardy, seaman ; John O'Connor, seaman ; Andrew White, seaman ; James 
Lawler, seaman ; John Mullen, ship's cook and steward ; John O'Connor, 
ordinary seaman, cabin boy. 

The Erin's Hope was freighted with a precious cargo to insurgent Ire- 
land. She had on board six million rounds of ammunition ; six small 
cannons (field pieces) ; six thousand stand of arms, and accouterments 
sufficient to equip a brigade, including several cases of cavalry sabers. 
If these were landed and the rifles in the hands of the I. R. B. men at 
home, it would form the nucleus of a small army which might rally the 
people to renewed and more vigorous efforts. 

The sealed instructions were to the effect that the vessel was to sail 
for the western coast of Ireland, and there at some point from shore 
receive certain signals, which had been agreed upon by the Council in 
Ireland and those at the head of affairs in America. These signals were 
for a long time not forthcoming — so long that all hope was abandoned in 
this direction. 

A council of war was held on board the Erin's Hope, and they decided 



154 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

to inveigle a pilot on board and to make a landing at Sligo harbor, attack 
the police and detachment of military there stationed, rally the people to 
the national flag, and land the arms, equip the men rapidly, and take the 
field. By this daring coup de main they hoped to create such a diversion 
from Dublin and Cork, that the insurgents, whom they still considered 
were under arms, would have increased chances of success. 

This warlike plan was in part carried out ; the pilot was got on board 
and in twelve hours with a favoring breeze it was expected that the town 
of Sligo would be captured. At this time the looked for envoy material- 
ized. He intercepted the vessel and was taken on board off a yacht. The 
vigilance of the enemy had been such that he had to await a favorable 
opportunity to make his connection. This envoy was Colonel Rickard 
O. S. Burke. He countermanded the sacking of Sligo, strongly advised 
that the expedition in general should be abandoned, as during the six 
dreary weeks consumed in the passage, many of the leaders had been 
captured in Ireland and imprisoned. This counsel the men on board 
refused to hearken to. It was finally agreed upon that a few of the mili- 
tary officers would accompany Colonel Burke in his yacht ashore ; that 
these would make rapid headway to the southwest coast of Cork and 
there make arrangements for the landing of the men and military stores : 
the vessel in the meantime to sail for that point. 

But the voyage, owing to unlooked for causes, had been so prolonged 
that water and provisions had almost given out. Head winds and a 
badly damaged craft again prevailed to still further prolong the long 
looked for landing. During the voyage a raft had been constructed 
under the supervision of Colonel Tresilian, and a barrel of gunpowder 
so placed that, if they were in imminent danger of capture, they could all 
take to the raft and blow up the ship sooner than that the vessel and her 
military should become a prize to the enemy. The Erin's Hope was 
now for some weeks off the Irish coast sailing in different directions, and 
although boarded by coast guardsmen off Donegal, their suspicions were 
lulled, and they succeeded in running the gauntlet successfully in spite of 
the enemy's cruisers. At last famine began to stare the brave voyagers 
in the face, and there was no alternative but to make a landing at the 
first favorable opportunity. They decided to try and effect an insurrec- 
tion in the South, as Cork County was a hot-bed of revolution. The 
Erins Hope was to continue her voyage, to the south, as agreed to by 
Colonel Rickard O. S. Burke. The men who landed were to scatter 
through the county, and in small groups concentrate at the place they 
were trying to make by sea. Having reached a common rendezvous in 
Cork, where they would be joined by those of their party who had gone 
before, these would have, it was hoped, rallied the gallant Cork men, 
and communicating with the Erin's Hope by signal, as agreed upon, land 
the arms and commence the fight. 

With this purpose in view, one foggy morning very early in June, this 
landing (the fourth) was effected by the captain hailing two small fishing 
smacks alongside, and while ostensibly negotiating for the transfer of 
two sick men on shore, a party of about thirty men threw themselves 
from the deck of the Erins Hope, and almost paralyzed the poor fisher- 
men and submerged their crude fishing boat. Enough men were left on 
board to bring the vessel back to America, if such a course were the only 
alternative. Those who landed were instructed to scatter through the 
hills and mountains, and by devious ways try to reach the appointed 
rendezvous. 

This fourth and final landing off Helrick Head, Waterford, was 
effected in broad daylight, and within gunshot range of two coast guard 
stations ; it was only then that the alleged vigilant coast guards proved 




GENERAL WILLIAM J. NAGLE. 

One of the military commanders of the 
Eriiis Hope expedition. 




CAPTAIN AUGUSTINE E. COSTELLO. 

One of the officers of the Erin's Hope military expedi- 
tion to Ireland. 



"ERIN'S HOPE" EXPEDITION FROM AMERICA. 155 

their usefulness, and this they could not possibly avoid. This landing, 
being observed, caused a general alarm ; the enemy quickly sent out 
flying columns of soldiers and police ; these captured the wayfarers, only 
very few of their number escaping arrest. The men captured were held 
in prison for trial. Colonel John Warren and Captain Augustine E. 
Costello were, however, the only ones convicted — Warren being sentenced 
for fifteen years and Costello for twelve years. 

The Erin s Hope made for the southwestern rendezvous, and not 
finding her signals answered as agreed upon, made sail for New York. 
The arrest of the disembarked men and the demoralizing influences 
already stated destroyed all chances of making a stand. Every leader 
in the south of any ability had been swept into prison by the 
enemy. 

After several hairbreadth escapes the Eriris Hope remained off 
the Irish coast for a long period. It must be borne in mind that the 
British cruisers had been in the meantime on the alert for the capture of 
the adventurous craft, her coming having been heralded and her presence 
now so well known to the blundering enemy. But more marvelous still, 
with all of England's naval force, the gallant little brigantine ran the 
blockade successfully, and after all this transpired to the knowledge of 
the British officials, and in spite of their great fleet of cruisers that were 
on the lookout and in hot pursuit, the Erin's Hope still hovered near the 
Irish coast, having changed her course, and finally succeeded in returning 
to New York safely and thereby saving the military stores on board from 
capture by the enemy, and this also despite the fact that two large men- 
of-war which were in pursuit went down off the dangerous Irish coast 
and were lost. 

One important lesson Irishmen can learn from the Erins Hope 
expedition, and that is a practical denial of the coward's argument, that 
the British fleet is invincible in its vigilance. At any time an armed 
expedition can elude the enemy's cruisers and effect a landing on the 
Irish coast. Imperfect organization, unskillful and blundering leaders 
may destroy the success of such an undertaking, but it is unlikely that 
the enemy will do so. If officered and commanded by cool, skillful, and 
brave men, such as had charge of the Erins Hope — which from its 
departure from Sandy Hook might have been more properly called the 
" Forlorn Hope " — there is nothing more certain in human calculations 
but that men and arms will be safely debarked in Ireland. 

There is nothing more positive than that a nation which hesitates is 
lost. The favorable chance of raising the standard of insurrection by 
the officers who crossed in the Erins Hope was the original plan to 
land in Sligo, Colonel Rickard Burke's instructions and the state of the 
country notwithstanding. To the honor of the brave and gallant fellows 
who made the dangerous and perilous voyage across the Atlantic in so 
small a craft, they were with difficulty persuaded to change their plans, 
and in so hesitating, or rather being persuaded into doing so, the fruits of 
the expedition in giving Ireland a fair chance to at least make a decent 
fight was lost. The prestige of the landing of a party of American 
officers would have speedily rallied the men in the gap, their great wants — 
arms, accouterments, and military commanders — were already prepared, 
and ammunition enough to pile up the enemy's dead in rows like the 
sands in the seashore after an angry tide has ebbed. Even though they 
would have been eventually beaten, looking at the gloomiest side, they 
would have redeemed Ireland's honor from the contemptible fiasco of 
the 5th of March, for armed Irishmen under military commanders would 
give a good account of themselves before the invaders could succeed in 
plucking a victory. They would have made a heroic resistance and made 



156 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the enemy's ranks feel the force of their blows ere they would have suc- 
cumbed to numbers. 

Those who carp and sneer at such gallant, although desperate, enter- 
prizes as the Erin's Hope expedition should remember that the world's 
history would have little to ennoble it and that the triumph of right would 
become hopeless if there were not in all races and in all ages self-sacrificing 
men prepared to die in the cause of truth and justice, and venture their 
whole happiness, fortunes, and lives on the hazard of the die. Let these men 
ask themselves, if Irishmen, what they have done for their country, and 
if all sons of the Green Isle were to wrap themselves in similar selfishness, 
what would mankind think of such a race ? Where would be the " Stars 
and Stripes" and this glorious republic if the nation had not produced 
heroes ready and willing to offer everything they possessed on the altar of 
their country's freedom ? The Erin's Hope expedition should be remem- 
bered by Irishmen as a gallant endeavor in the face of almost certain 
destruction to come to their country's assistance in the hour of peril. To 
everyone who was connected with that adventurous and risky voyage 
Ireland owes a deep debt of gratitude, and posterity will honor them, 
should the nation emerge from thralldom to independence, or should she 
try to imitate them if there is yet a lingering spark of the unquenchable 
fire of patriotism remaining in dear old Innisfail. 

The writer had the pleasure of meeting General George Phelan a short 
time after his landing at Sligo, in company with Colonel Rickard O. S. 
Burke. He was forcibly struck at the time with the character of this dash- 
ing cavalry officer. He had fought during the Civil War in command 
of a Confederate cavalry regiment, and his views on Irish revolution were 
sound and practical, although he was utterly unacquainted with the actual 
condition of Ireland. He was born in the Southern States and was the 
offspring of two generations of Irishmen, who had emigrated from Ireland, 
and after the long exile of his family, this gallant soldier of the third 
generation comes freely to fight for the cradle of his race, as eager for the 
fray as the persecuted peasant who feels the whips and thongs of British 
slavery. What a God-given patriotism is it that animates the Irish race, 
and yet although more than capable of driving out the enemy by a united 
and determined endeavor, some strange fatality keeps them enchained ! 

The word useless effusion of blood is never applicable to Ireland. The 
war of extermination never ceases on the enemy's part. What is termed 
peace is the time of the most terrific destruction. The continued bleed- 
ing to death of the nation compels Irishmen to work to bring about the 
speediest revolution possible, if for no other object than to retard the 
frightful drain on the national life. 

A war for independence, no matter how carried on, and at no matter 
what daily sacrifice of life — the most devastating war recorded in history — 
would be a salvation to Ireland compared with this ghastly, death-dealing 
peace. 




GENERAL JOHN WARREN. 

One of the commanding officers of Erin's Hope 

expedition to Ireland. 



CHAPTER XI. 
(i86fr.) 

MANCHESTER RESCUE, SEPTEMBER, 1S67 CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION 

INTENDED ATTACK ON CORYDON IN DUBLIN EDMOND O'DONOVAN 

REMINISCENCES. 

Arrest of Colonel Thomas J. Kelly and Captain Dacey in Manchester — Feeling among the 
Nationalists — A Meeting Called — Captain Michael O'Brien Presides — Determination 
of the Meeting — A Special Levy Ordered — Michael Davitt as Arms Agent — Communi- 
cated With — Armed Videttes Posted to Watch Corydon's Arrival — Meeting of Officers 
— Kelly and Dacey 's Rescue Decided on — Eleven Unmarried Men Selected to Carry 
Out the Rescue — Names of the Eleven Rescuers — Captain Michael O'Brien to Take 
Command — The Morning of the Police Magistrate's Examination — Michael Larkin 
Ordered to go Home — His Request to Take Part in the Rescue Refused — Scene at 
the Railroad Bridge — The Waiting Irish — Arrival of their Videttes — The Van Ap- 
proaches — Guarded Securely — Two Cabs Filled with Policemen — Cahill and Boulger 
to the Front — Shooting one of the Horses — The Van is Brought to a Sudden Halt — 
The Panic of the Police — Roll off the Van — Rush to the Railroad Arch — Futile Attempts 
to Break Open the Van — Crowds of Onlookers Gather — Brett Refuses to Surrender 
the Keys — The Lock is Fired Into — Death of Sergeant Brett — Panic of the British 
Crowd — The Van Doors are Open — The Rescuers Retire — A Halt is Ordered — 
Kelly and Dacey do not Follow — The British Crowd Rallies — Numbers Approach 
the Van — The Return of the Eleven with Leveled Revolvers — The Crowd Retires 
Slowly — Dixon Tries to Rally the British — Cahill and Boulger Advance Toward the 
Crowd — The Leveled Revolvers — Dixon Falls Wounded — British Crowd Fly Panic 
Stricken — The Cells are Opened — Allen and Kelly — The Prisoners are Freed — 
Kelly's Handcuffs — The Eleven Separate — The Scene at the Inn — Walk to Ashton — 
Kelly's Coolness — The Irish Woman — Kelly Seeks Refuge — Kelly's Disguise — The 
Omnibus — The Arrest — The Loquacious Landlord — Return to Manchester— Letter 
from Paris Opened — Kelly's Decoy Letters — The Chief of Police Seeks Kelly's 
Re-capture — The Chief Makes a Raid — Kelly's Ruse — Letter from Liverpool — 
Chagrin of the British — The Chief of Police Resigns — Kelly gets Away Safely — 
Clerkenwell Explosion — Arrest and Death of Barrett — Captain Murphy and Casey 
Escape to France — Extradition Refused by the Empire — The Casey Brothers in the 
Franco-German War — Wounded before Paris — Andrew Casey Receives Legion of 
Honor for Valor — Captain Lawrence O'Brien's Escape from Clonmel Jail — Corydon 
in Dublin — Proposed Plan of Attack — Chancery Lane Detective Station — The 
Twenty-five Volunteers — Going for Greek Fire — Unexpected Delay — The Advanced 
Arrival — Cordon of the Enemy — Policeman McKenna Stops the I. R. B. Man — 
McKenna Shot — The Second Cordon — Sergeant Kelly Tries to Stop the Flying 
Irishman — The Sergeant Shot — The Castle Alarmed — Corydon Removed — The Irish- 
woman Secretes the Revolver — Mrs John Kirwan Takes Charge of the Weapon — Mrs 
Kirwan as a Patriot — Career of Edmond O'Donovan — Incidents in Fenian Days — 
Franco-German War—Three Days' Fight before Orleans — O'Donovan Made Prisoner 
of War — War Correspondent During the Spanish Campaign — Montenegrin Cam- 
paign — On Moukhtar Pasha's Staff — Adventures in the Montenegrin Lines — Swim in 
the Danube — Turkish Rout after the Battle of Aladja Dagh — Entry into Kars — 
O'Donovan and the Angry Ottoman — With General Lazareff in Central Asia — Death 
of Lazareff — Appointment of Tergukasoff — O'Donovan Leaves the Russian Lines — 
General Scobeloff Takes Command — O' Donovan's Telegram An Revoir a Merv — 
Ride in the Desert — O'Donovan Enters Merv — White and Black Russians — Prisoner 
of the Akhal Tekkes — Elevated Kahn of Merv — Ambassador to England — O'Donovan's 
Irish Patriotism — Slaughter of Hicks Pasha's Army — Death of O'Donovan — Miss 
Sarah Jane Butler — Cecilia Walsh — Her Death — Nicholas Walsh Dies in Italy — 
James Stephens — Reflections on this Epoch, 

Britain had yet to feel one or two waves of the retiring angry tem- 
pest of Irish wrath, the departing waters of an ebbing tide that was in 
full spring, flowing rapidly two years before. 

i57 



158 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Coming from an I. R. B. council one night in September of that 
eventful year, Colonel Thomas J. Kelly and Captain Timothy Dacy were 
captured by the enemy's police. The British were not at first aware of 
the important arrests they had made. The wretched traitor Corydon 
was ordered to be brought to the prison to identify the newly arrested 
men. When the news reached the men of the organization that Colonel 
Kelly had at last fallen into the hands of the foe, a determined feeling of 
resistance permeated the Irish Nationalists of Manchester, which spread 
over the country as the other circles heard of the news. 

A meeting of the active members was at once called to take some 
action in this emergency. Captain Michael O'Brien, who was the brains 
of this movement and who soon after sealed his devotion to Ireland by 
dying on a British scaffold, presided at this important meeting. Among 
those present that evening were James Cahill, Thomas Boulger, Captain 
Edward O'Meagher Condon, Peter Rice, Daniel Redden, John Stoneman, 
Joseph Keely, Peter Ryan, James Doran, William Philip Allen, Michael 
Larkin, Michael Cluny, Dennis Hynes. The head centre of the district, 
who still lives and works for Ireland, with many others, were also present. 
These gallant men's names cannot be given, as they are still living under 
the foeman's flag. Owing to the many undertakings which died in the 
womb that eventful year, there was at that time a scarcity of arms. A 
special levy was ordered to be promptly made upon the different circles, 
and Captain O'Meagher Condon was made treasurer of this fund. A 
sum of twenty-seven pounds ($135) was collected that night at the meet- 
ing. When it is recollected that nearly all these men were poor working- 
men, the great sacrifice made by humble Irishmen in the cause of their 
motherland will be understood by sympathizing mankind who love 
liberty and hate oppression. 

Michael Davitt, now a sincere believer in the blessings that Ireland 
can receive under a foreign flag if local laws are only made in Dublin, 
was at this period an Irish Nationalist and a very fiery and enthusiastic 
member of the I. R. B. ranks. True, this was before the period of that 
bright vision in the enemy's dungeons when hate was to be conquered by 
love. At this period Michael Davitt believed that the enemy could only 
be conquered by the same weapons that George Washington and other 
great patriots adopted. So earnest was he in his creed of nationality 
that he was employed in the position of arms agent for the organization. 
He was instructed to procure as many revolvers as possible to meet all 
possible contingencies. Mr. Davitt wrote the men in Manchester shortly 
after the rescue, regretting and explaining his inability to procure these 
weapons at the time. Armed videttes were ordered to be posted in 
different directions, and every move of the enemy watched. That Cory- 
don would be sent to Manchester to identify the prisoners the men felt 
satisfied. Captain Michael O'Brien, who assumed command at this crisis 
in Irish affairs, gave orders to have Corydon attacked and executed for 
treason at no matter what sacrifice to the life of his men. Fiercely and 
joyfully volunteers came forward to carry out these orders. The Irish 
Nationalists expected the arrival of this infamous creature by the 
London trains, and had Corydon made his appearance, traveling by the 
ordinary route, Manchester would have been the scene of another excit- 
ing episode in the Irish war of retaliation. The Irish Nationalists were 
in a desperate state of mind over the failure of the cause, and Corydon 
played no insignificant part in aiding the enemy. Had this wretch 
made his appearance, even with a large guard, he would have been 
attacked, and possibly in slaying him an emeute of a sanguinary nature 
might have ensued. 

Corydon's abject fright and the necessities of the enemy obviated this 




'<■ 



m ' 



COL. THOS. J. KELLY, U. S. ARMY SIGNAL CORPS. 
Successor to James Stephens as C. O. I. R.; rescued at Manchester, England, Sept., 1867 



MANCHESTER RESCUE, SEPTEMBER, 1867. 159 

risk, which no doubt they calculated on. They brought their vile instru- 
ment by a roundabout route and drove him from a distant station to the 
jail. Had the Irish been able to have mounted their videttes — an impos- 
sibility in the then state of their exchequer in Manchester — Corydon 
would have probably been executed, for Captain Michael O'Brien was 
awake to every move of the foe, and had four armed men patrolling in 
the neighborhood of the prison. Corydon was driven rapidly by these 
sentinels; his appearance was like a flash of lightning, so swift was the 
horse and cab that flew by them into the prison yard. 

When Captain O'Brien heard of the safe arrival of Corydon he knew 
that all possible chance of concealing Colonel Kelly's identity was out of 
the question. He knew the enemy would feel overjoyed at their fortunate 
coup du guerre in at last capturing the famous Irish leader they so often 
tried in vain to get within their clutches. There was nothing else for the 
Irish to do but rescue him come what may. A meeting of the district 
officers was held, and preparations made for the attempt at rescue. Ten 
men, all unmarried, were told off to make an attack on the prison van 
which was to re-convey Kelly and Dacy back to the jail. The men 
selected were all reliable, determined men, who were prepared to take 
their lives in their hands and carry out their orders at any cost. Captain 
Michael O'Brien was to assume command and be himself on the scene. 
Two of these men were told off to watch the prison van outside the police- 
station in Manchester, to observe every action of the enemy, and on 
Colonel Kelly and Captain Dacy's removal to the van, noting the number 
of the enemy's guard, they were to drive rapidly ahead of the police 
coach and reach Captain O'Brien and his men where they were posted. 
Hundreds of Irish Nationalists could be easily procured to join in this 
attack, but the leaders had wisely decided to have the fewest possible 
number of men present, which would more easily facilitate the escape and 
also cause the smallest possible loss to the organization. Captain O'Brien 
very correctly gauged the courage of that loud-mouthed braggart John 
Bull, as the sequel showed, for although his soldiers and sailors are not 
second in valor to other Caucasian nationalities, as a military people 
they are the most contemptible in Europe. They have been truly called 
a nation of shopkeepers. 

The men told off to attack the van and rescue the Irish National 
officers from the enemy's clutches were James Cahill, Peter Rice, Wil- 
liam Philip Allen, Daniel Reddin, Joseph Keely, Michael Cluny, Dennis 
Hynes, and John Stoneman. The two men who were to bring them the 
news of Kelly and Dacy's being in the van, and who were afterward to 
assist in the rescue, were Thomas Boulger and Peter Ryan. 

The morning of Kelly and Dacy's examination before the enemy's 
police magistrate was a morning of excitement among the Irish in Man- 
chester. Many of the I. R. B., who knew that something of an unusual 
kind was about to take place, were very anxious to know the whereabouts 
of the expected attack, for they were eager to take part in it. Any of 
them recognized by Captain O'Brien, who reconnoitered about the police 
court in the early morn, were peremptorily ordered home. Among these 
was Michael Larkin. This brave fellow earnestly requested to be allowed 
to share in the danger of any enterprise on foot. But he had a family 
and his services could not be accepted. Captain O'Brien, who knew his 
worth, gently but firmly requested his immediate withdrawal from the 
courthouse. With reluctance and a saddened look on his face he obeyed 
the order. He was subsequently captured by the enemy in endeavoring 
to reach the scene after the rescue, in which he took no part whatever 
and was not near the place. The hanging of this faithful Irishman by 
the British as an active participant in the killing of Sergeant Brett 



160 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

fully illustrates the panic of British so-called justice and the infamous 
system of perjury which haunt her witness tables, whenever Irish Nation, 
alists are arraigned at the bar for the crime of making war upon the 
hereditary destroyers of their country. 

It is past noon ; Captain O'Brien and his gallant comrades are posted 
near the railway arch which crosses the Bellevue Road in the vicinity of 
Manchester. The position taken up by the Irish is about three miles 
from the city, and about half a mile from the prison and within about 
seventy-five feet of the railway. There is a slight dip in the road as it 
passes under the arch. Captain O'Brien has, with the true instructs of a 
soldier, selected the very best position for the forthcoming attack. There 
is an anxious, expectant gaze in the eyes of these Irish guerrilla soldiers 
as they walk up and down, looking eagerly toward the city. But the 
humor of their race is now and then displayed in the merry badinage 
they give to each other. A vehicle is seen approaching rapidly and two 
men, signaling the Irish soldiers, are recognized by them as Boulger and 
Ryan. They drive away a little, get down, and dismiss their cab. They 
bring news that the prison van is approaching with eight policemen as 
additional guard, together with two cabs each containing four men. 
Sixteen of the enemy as additional protection. Captain O'Brien has 
walked up a little way to confer with a woman who has come with a mes- 
sage. The noise of wheels is heard, O'Brien takes his place, the men 
stand around in a determined attitude ready for any emergency. The 
prison van, drawn by galloping horses is seen coming toward them at a ter- 
rific pace ; behind in the turn of the road the two vehicles filled with British 
police are plainly visible. James Cahill, several paces to the front, in 
a loud voice calls out, " Halt ! pull up ! " The Briton who drives appears 
paralyzed ; he seems incapable of understanding. Cahill levels his 
revolver at the horses and one of the leaders is shot. Reddin and Boulger 
rush forward, and grasping the reins, hold the horses back on their 
haunches and the prison van comes to a stand. In the meanwhile the 
police on the top of the van and the driver quickly disappeared. They 
do not climb down, neither do they jump down ; they literally roll off the 
van in their fright. The two cabs stop quickly and their occupants jump 
out and all run toward the railway arch. They are quickly called to a 
halt by Thomas Boulger, who with leveled revolver emphasizes his com- 
mands. The sixteen policemen are now huddled together like frightened 
sheep under the railway arch ; two Irishmen are detailed to guard them. 
Oh, valiant John Bull ! and this is the race and these be the men, forsooth, 
who brag and bluster that they've beaten the world in arms ! O'Brien 
and his men now rush to the door of the prison van, which is assailed by 
every missile that the Irish can get, but the strong doors resist all efforts 
of the Irish to batter them down. By this time a British crowd of on- 
lookers arrived, who quickly grasp the situation, but hesitate before taking 
any action. These are soon recruited by others from the neighborhood 
and a large crowd is now collected. O'Brien quickly notices the increase 
of the British onlookers that may soon be possibly actors in this historic 
episode. Police Sergeant Brett, who is inside the van, has repeatedly 
refused to give up the keys. This brave man does his duty to his country 
fearlessly, the one bright spot in British cowardice on that celebrated day. 
Several voices shout out, " Break the lock with a bullet!" With this 
intention Peter Rice places his revolver to the keyhole and fires. Ser- 
geant Brett is looking through the key-hole and the bullet pierces his 
brain. Peter Rice, who fired this shot, was not aware of Brett's position 
at the keyhole. It was not to kill Brett, but to smash the lock, that Rice 
shot. Many writers and speakers, describing this famous rescue, take par- 
ticular pains to explain away the killing of Sergeant Brett by impressing on 



MANCHESTER RESCUE, SEPTEMBER, 1867. 161 

their readers or hearers that it was the result of an accident and not pre- 
meditated. In a measure, so far as explained here, this was so. But that 
there was anything to explain away or apologize for in behalf of the Irish 
engaged is rank folly. These Irish Nationalists were prepared to kill 
every British guard present, or who might be sent there, if they could, or 
if it was necessary to accomplish their purpose. We deplore, as all Irish 
Nationalists do, the necessity forced on our people. But let the Briton 
look to it, all the blood shed in these guerrilla struggles, and all the 
deaths resulting from this cruel and bitter war rest upon his head. He 
wantonly commenced the invasion and he as ruthlessly is still carrying it 
on, and as sure as the sun shines in the firmament will the day of reckon- 
ing and the hour of retribution come upon him for his seven centuries of 
cruel persecution and bloody usurpation of the government of the Irish 
people. 

At the first sound of the shot a panic seizes the British crowd and 
they rush away in every direction. When Brett falls mortally wounded 
inside the van, a prisoner who was standing near him, an unfortunate 
woman, stooped in affright, and taking the keys from the prostrate police- 
man handed them through the wicket to the Irishmen outside. Quick as 
lightning the bolt of the lock is shot back and the van door is thrown 
wide open. O'Brien and Cahill call out to Colonel Kelly and Captain 
Dacey " Follow us quickly," and O'Brien orders all to retire. The Irish- 
men were under the impression that the prisoners were free when the van 
door was open. They were not familiar with the interior of these vehicles, 
which contained so many cells in each side in which the prisoners were 
securely locked. There were more prisoners upon this day than the cells 
could contain, and seeing prisoners standing around in the hurried glance 
they gave the Irish thought Kelly and Dacy were among the people who 
rushed to leave the van. Seeing the Irish retreat the British crowd, 
who had come to a halt after the first fright of the shot, now advanced 
more boldly toward the van. Even the frightened police mustered up 
courage to leave their place of refuge under the arch when their guard 
was withdrawn. O'Brien and Cahill look behind — they have gone some 
twenty or thirty yards from the van and Kelly and Dacy are not seen to 
follow. O'Brien calls a halt and the Irish prepare to return. This is 
indeed an exciting moment, and one well worthy the brush of a painter. 
The crowds are now nearing the van, some of them are between the Irish 
and the prison vehicle. With steady step and with leveled revolvers the 
Irish advance toward the van. These eleven men are now confronted by 
over a thousand British onlookers. There is a far-away look in O'Brien's 
eyes as he advances at the head of his men ; Cahill and Boulger, who come 
next, have a dangerous look in their eyes. They realize the situation 
and are prepared to overcome all opposition by the indomitable will of 
the unconquered Celt. These eleven humble men are transposed into 
heroes ; the rays of martyrdom surround two in that gallant band. The 
sorrows and agonies of their motherland fill them with superhuman 
courage. It is the moment of crucial test in the rescue. If the British 
advance by mere weight of numbers these devoted men will be over- 
borne and the day will be lost. There is a something in the eyes of these 
Irishmen that makes the Britons quail. Slowly but sullenly they fall back 
at the approach of the Irish. The panic that had seized them a moment 
ago is gone, they are recovering from their fright, but still hesitate to 
approach the Irish. 

O'Brien and his men now approach the van. They enter the vehicle 
and the unlocking of the cell doors is heard. A brawny Briton named 
Dixon now steps forward and addresses the mob, on the skirts of which 
are to be seen the police guard, who are even more timorous than the 



162 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

people. Dixon's words of appeal to British courage is received with loud 
shouts of approval. Dixon shakes aloft a thick cudgel and advances, fol- 
lowed by the British, who now number fifteen or sixteen hundred people. 
Cahill and Boulger are standing a little way from the van with their 
backs to the vehicle, facing the crowd. A fierce light leaps from Cahill's 
eyes as Dixon harangues the mob ; Boulger also looks angry. They 
quickly walk toward the advancing foe. Cahill in a loud peremptory 
tone orders the British to retreat : the crowd is irresolute. Dixon turns 
and urges them, appealing to them as Englishmen ; quick as lightning 
Cahill levels his revolver and shoots Dixon in the thigh. With a scream 
of pain the Briton falls, and with a yell of fear the British run as swift as 
their feet can carry them. Two shots that are fired into the ground 
expedite if possible the fleeing mob. They are accompanied in their flight 
by the craven police guard. Oh, valiant and heroic Britons ! What a 
picture is this of your great chivalry ! Was there no Tennyson to sing or 
Froude to picture your gallant daring ? Eleven Irishmen in the heart of 
your own tight little Island breaks open your prison van, free their com- 
rades in spite of your sixteen police guards and several hundred of the 
bone and sinew of your citizens. All hail, gallant Irishmen ! Illustrious 
eleven, your action upon that day was far more daring than Tennyson's 
six hundred. It was no hairbrained piece of folly, like the much-vaunted 
charge ; but the well thought out, well executed work of daring men who 
succeeded in accomplishing their purpose. 

The British have now melted out of sight. Kelly and Dacy are freed. 
A shout of joy from the Irish informs the two statue-like sentinels, Cahill 
and Boulger, that success so far has crowned their efforts. Young 
Allen, who had borne himself manfully in the rescue, rushes to embrace 
Colonel Kelly, crying out, " Kelly, I would die for you." Were they 
words of presage ? Full well they were fulfilled, for the heroic boy soon 
after gave up his young life on the enemy's scaffold. The men soon 
scatter. Some accompany Captain Dacy, others go with Kelly. With 
the intention of disguising his friend Joseph Keely exchanges coats with 
Kelly. Colonel Kelly and his new companions hurry on toward Ashton, 
a suburb of Manchester. En route Keely procures a file with which he 
files Colonel Kelly's handcuffs apart, but although his hands were freed 
from the links which bound them together, he could not get the gyves off 
his wrist, as each was fastened firmly by a spring lock. He pulled down 
his cuffs as far as he could to conceal his bracelets. When Kelly's hands 
were freed from each other the whole party entered an inn, and after par- 
taking of some refreshments they separated. This was Colonel Kelly's 
suggestion, as there was a great possibility of recapture, and so many 
together might attract attention. Accompanied by Peter Ryan, who 
loyally remained by him, the colonel walked leisurely toward Ashton. 
His coolness, judgment, and self-possession on this occasion saved him 
from capture and possibly from death. 

By this time the news of the " Fenian " rescue, as it was called, spread 
like wildfire in all directions. It was such a daring act to attack a prison 
van in broad noonday and in the heart of the enemy's country that all 
sorts of exaggerated stories were circulated as to the numbers and ferocity 
of the atrocious Fenians. As Kelly and his friend walked toward Ashton 
in a leisurely, unconcerned manner, they saw before them, coming in their 
direction, two detectives who carefully scrutinized every pedestrian that 
passed. Colonel Kelly cautioned Ryan as he valued his liberty not to 
throw a single glance upon these detectives, but to look at his face. 
Kelly commenced the narration of some imaginary story, which he told 
with evident interest as the detectives came near. His coolness and 
sang fr oid satisfied the detectives, who glanced at them both and walked 



MANCHESTER RESCUE, SEPTEMBER, 1867. 163 

by. A little further on there were two more of these officials, who, 
looking at the two men, crossed the road toward them. Colonel Kelly 
recommenced his story-telling, impressing on Ryan the necessity of not 
looking up or appearing to take any notice of the unwelcome officers ; 
one glance of an eye and they would be both arrested. The detectives, 
struck with their apparent unconcern, hesitated to accost them. They 
however followed, as if undecided. Kelly felt that affairs were growing 
critical with him. He turned a corner, shutting the enemy out of sight, 
and then said hurriedly to Peter, "We must separate. Have you any 
money?" "I have two shillings and some coppers," replied Ryan. 
"Well, I'll take one of the shillings." "You'll take them both," said 
Peter, handing Kelly the money. " Now," said he, " I will cross over to 
this shop to buy a pennyworth of putty, aud you can go off in another 
direction." 

As Kelly turned another corner he saw a shed in which he sought 
concealment behind some lines of clothing hanging out to dry. The 
detectives followed Ryan into the shop and arrested him. It was mere 
vague suspicion on their part ; a crowd gathered around the place, which 
convinced Kelly, who noticed the hurried movements of people passing by, 
that his friend was captured. At this moment a woman with a basket of 
washing entered the shed. She started as she saw Kelly, and in friendly 
tones told him to remain quiet, as his friend had been arrested across the 
next street. Kelly said he had been in a row and that it would ruin him 
to be taken prisoner, and asked this kindly disposed woman if she would 
give him shelter until the storm would blow over. After a moment's 
hesitation she consented, and Kelly entered her humble home, in 
which were a number of children belonging to his generous hostess. On 
looking round he recognized several religious and Irish national pictures 
on the walls, which revealed to him he was in the home of a country- 
woman. Colonel Kelly's position was a desperate one ; his life hung 
apparently on a slender thread. There was no alternative but to take 
this Irishwoman into his confidence. He did so, and found he was 
correct in his estimation of her character. When she discovered who her 
guest was she was filled with enthusiasm and anxiety ; and although his 
presence in her home if discovered would imperil her own and her 
husband's liberty, she was determined to do all that lay in her humble 
power to save him from his enemies. He asked her if she had a razor or 
a scissors by which he could remove his beard and alter his appearance. 
She had neither, but sent her daughter out to borrow a scissors from a 
neighbor, and with this Kelly clipped his beard as closely as possible. 
Then he gave his hostess one of his two shillings to purchase for him a 
cloth cap, such as mill-hands and factory workmen wear. This, when 
worn, as these people do, with the peak partly at the side of the face, and 
with his trimmed beard, made a metamorphose in his appearance. The 
proclamation and reward for the recapture of the rescued Irish officers 
described Colonel Kelly as wearing a deer-stalker's hat, and any wearers 
of that headgear in the neighborhood of Manchester found that an 
unpleasant day. Kelly remained under the shelter of his hostess' roof 
until the dusk of the evening, when this devoted Irishwoman, putting on 
her shawl, escorted her visitor to the highroad, where the omnibus for 
Manchester passed by. They passed police and detectives on the way 
who took no notice of them. Kelly looked a mill-hand to the life. As 
this generous-souled Irishwoman bade Kelly good-by, she told him that 
the police station was a little lower down the road and to be careful. 
Kelly, after parting with the friend who had so nobly sheltered him, 
thought that the passing omnibus might be searched when it came to the 
police station, and so walked on by that building. He was correct in his 



164 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

surmise ; the omnibus was stopped at the police depot and the passengers 
examined ; an Irish laborer was arrested and taken out of the vehicle a 
prisoner. This was one of those stupid, haphazard arrests which British 
police always make when in a panic. 

Colonel Kelly stopped the omnibus a little lower down and climbed 
to his seat on the top of the vehicle. On-the route into town they halted 
at the inn where Kelly and his friends had stopped for refreshments in 
the morning. The landlord was standing outside the inn door, enter- 
taining a group of interested people with his adventure with the Fenians 
in the morning ; when the hue and cry was published the host of the inn 
recognized, or fancied he did, Colonel Kelly by his description. The 
omnibus driver and conductor listened, with open mouth, to the land- 
lord's grotesque and exaggerated account of a very simple incident, and 
all the time the jolly host was delighting his friends with a description of 
the appearance, sayings, and doings of his bloodthirsty visitors — as they 
were termed — Kelly was looking down on the group with apparent 
unconcern. When they reached Manchester, Kelly took another omni- 
bus and got safely home, where he had no fear he would be re-captured. 

Although all of the Gallant Eleven who took active part in the Man- 
chester rescue are worthy of honor from Irishmen for their conduct on 
this memorable day, there are three men through whose efforts more 
especially the affair was conducted to such remarkable success : Cap- 
tain Michael O'Brien by his leadership and brave conduct of the whole 
incident, and James Cahill and Thomas Boulger by their intrepidity 
and valor upon this occasion. Daniel Reddin must not be omitted. He 
was at this time a splendid specimen of an Irish athlete. The enemy 
turned him out of his dungeon a crippled, paralyzed, and decrepit man, who 
had to be wheeled about for the short time he lingered after his release. It 
would be a mercy to Irish prisoners of war if the enemy would shoot them, 
instead of the brutal, lingering death they torture them with. But their 
cruelty is quite in keeping with British courage. Captain O'Brien, who 
spent a few years in the United States army, was a gallant young soldier. 
His name is immortalized in the trinity of martyrs who died for Ireland 
on the enemy's gibbet. Michael O'Brien proved his devotion by his calm 
pure self-possession on the scaffold, and the few unknown words he spoke 
to his comrades Allen and Larkin consoled and cheered them during their 
last moments. As he came on the scaffold, he saw his youthful comrade 
pinioned; and raising Allen's cap he kissed him, whispering into his ear 
words of encouragement. Michael O'Brien died the representative of all 
that is heroic and godlike in human nature. 

Another Irish-American, whose life was spared by the British on 
account of his American citizenship, was Captain O'Meagher Condon. 
Although Captain Condon took no part in the rescue, his conduct in 
the dock should meet with the universal approval of Irish Nationalists. 
He will be remembered in Irish history as the man who first used the 
words " God save Ireland " in a British dock, which cry was taken up by 
his comrades near him, and which will remain indissolubly linked as the 
death slogan of the Manchester Martyrs. 

Colonel Kelly was residing in Manchester in safety. British gold 
could not purchase the secret of his retreat. At length a letter sent by 
Captain James Murphy from Paris gave Kelly the opportunity he so long 
desired to keep the police busy as to his whereabouts. Kelly knew that 
Captain Murphy's letter had been opened and that the chief of the 
police in Manchester held a copy of the letter. Opening letters passing 
through the mails is an everyday occurrence of the British when Irish 
Nationalists are sought after. Kelly sent a decoy letter to Captain Mur- 
phy to entrap the police chief, while he carried on his genuine correspon- 



MANCHESTER RESCUE, SEPTEMBER, 1867. 165 

dence through another channel. Kelly mentioned a certain address 
where he was staying, and as he suspected the house was raided, and 
although searched from attic to cellar, the Irish colonel could not be 
found. Shortly after this Kelly sent Murphy another decoy letter, inform- 
ing the Captain that he had a very narrow escape from being captured by 
the police, mentioning the address to which he had allured them. He 
informed his correspondent that he had only left the house when the 
police arrived. This letter confirmed the police chief in his belief 
that he was near having Kelly in his clutches. The large reward offered, 
as well as the honor of re-arresting the celebrated Fenian chief, made this 
police officer extra vigilant to effect the capture of Kelly. He thought 
he had a certain channel to procure reliable information of Kelly's move- 
ments in his own correspondence with Captain Murphy in Paris. He 
boasted among his friends that he would have the Fenian under lock and 
key before many weeks were over. The papers at this time began to 
mysteriously hint at certain information that had reached the authorities 
about the Fenian officers. Even the London Times copied some of 
these. At length Kelly tried his grand ruse. He wrote to Murphy 
another decoy letter, telling him that he was now very comfortably situ- 
ated in Manchester, and that he was staying with a good friend, mention- 
ing the name of a well-to-do Irish merchant tailor. The man he spoke 
of was a sort of Provincialist-Irishman, a gentlemanly, nice fellow socially, 
but British politically. The chief of police was in ecstacies when he 
read Kelly's letter. A careful watch was set upon the suburban residence 
of this merchant to see that Kelly did not escape. The Mayor and 
several high officials were invited by this police officer to be present at 
the capture of the famous Irishman. A strong force of police was drawn 
up before the tailor's house. The Mayor and the other officials were 
present. The supposed residence of Kelly was raided. It was in vain 
that the owner protested, denying all knowledge of the Fenian colonel. 
The police chieftain knew better ; the house was searched inside and out ; 
drawers, beds, and bureaus ransacked ; every conceivable and inconceiv- 
able place that a man could be hid was searched in vain. Kelly was 
not to be found. With reluctance, chagrin, and humiliation the chief 
drew off his police force. The papers were filled with an account of this 
raid. Kelly seemed to bear a charmed life. The police officer was the 
butt for many jests among his friends for allowing the Fenian to dupe 
him. To add to his discomfiture, he got another of Kelly's decoy letters 
which informed Captain Murphy that there was some traitor giving him 
away in Manchester, that he just got word that the police were coming a 
moment or two before they arrived, or he would have been captured in 
his friend the tailor's house. Detectives were again put on this house, 
but the chief did not dare to raid the place a second time. Another 
letter of Kelly's informed him that he would leave for the United 
States, taking the steamer at Liverpool the following week. The chief of 
police conveyed his information to his Government. Liverpool was 
flooded with detectives ; unusual vigilance was noted in searching every 
steamer. The chief himself went down to assist in the search. The sup- 
posed residence of Kelly was carefully watched ; the weeks went by and 
no news of Kelly, and the expected capture did not come off. This 
failure annoyed the chief, and the jeers of his friends stung him to mad- 
ness, when one morning he received a letter from Colonel Kelly with the 
Liverpool post-mark, telling him that by the time he received that letter 
he, Kelly, would be on the Atlantic en route for America. He thanked 
the chief for his great attention and the polite interest he took in all his 
movements, and bade him a long good-by. This letter was too much for 
the chief ; he showed it to his friends and it made him the subject of 



166 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

ridicule. The authorities could not believe the police chief did his 
duty intelligently ; they were annoyed at the news of Colonel Kelly's 
success in hoodwinking them by getting off from under their nose. The 
chief of police sent in his resignation, which was accepted. He was a 
sadder if not a wiser man by his encounter with Kelly. Manufactured 
reports of Kelly's arrival in the United States confirmed the bogus letter 
from Kelly. All extra vigilance ceased ; there was no necessity to look 
for the bird that had flown. Manchester became quiet after the restless 
fever of the past few months. But the bird had not flown ; Kelly was 
safe in Manchester ; the decoy letters had served their purpose, the coast 
was now clear, and one fine day in January, 1868, Kelly got away. His 
arrival was announced by the American press ; the British did not know 
what to think. They knew they were hoodwinked by the Irish colonel. 
As for the chief, when the real facts dawned upon him, he felt that Kelly 
had punished him for all his misdoings in connection with the recent 
trials and the forged and perjured testimony gotten up by him to procure 
conviction. 

Colonel Kelly proved himself to be one of the brainy men who were 
identified with the Irish struggle ; but alas for the folly and ruin of 
faction, which has been Ireland's curse in every generation, and which 
has often unconsciously transformed patriotic Irishmen, through passion 
and lack of judgment, into Ireland's enemies! Too often the wish to 
defeat an opposing interest or faction so animates them that they forget 
the common enemy altogether, and only think of overcoming the 
opposite party. These are men who would spurn British gold with 
loathing, yet from prejudice and bitterness do the enemy's work as effec- 
tively as if they were hirelings of the foe. 

Colonel Kelly was publicly insulted on a platform by men who knew 
not what they did, not to use a harsher term. The treatment of men 
who have been identified with Irish active work is one of the puzzles of 
Irish character. At first it is all sensation gush, and afterward it is cold 
neglect, if not animosity. Men of education and judgment like Colonel 
Kelly are too often cast aside for some worthless demagogue. 

Daniel Byrne, who manfully went through the rescue of Stephens and 
who refused to touch a penny as recompense, could not get any suitable 
employment when he came to America, and was compelled to enlist as a 
soldier. Irishmen too often love dead patriots and neglect living ones. 
When dead they may perhaps receive a grand funeral, as witness the 
circumstances in connection with John O'Mahony, so neglected previous 
to his death. And yet all this is complete want of thought, and not want 
of a kindly heart. 

Among the many romantic incidents during the Fenian epoch, was 
the escape of Captain Laurence O'Brien, of the 9th Conn. Vols., from 
Clonmel jail. Captain O'Brien was arrested, like a number of other 
Irish-American officers then in Ireland, under the suspension of the 
Habeas Corpus Act. He went by the name of Osborne when in Ireland. 
He worked with patience at the bars of his cell until he got them so 
loosened that he could remove them. Fearing he would be removed 
from his cell he feigned to become sullen and refractory, and asked to be 
changed from the cell he was confined in ; as a punishment his request 
was refused. A rope was secretly conveyed into the prison, and with the 
aid of this he managed to effect his escape. After many adventures he 
reached Waterford and put himself in communication with the organiza- 
tion ; he was met by a boat and rowed safely across the river and kept in 
concealment until they got him off in a vessel to France. Captain 
O'Brien is a resident of New Haven, Conn., and one of the men who 
rowed him over the river is a gallant Irishman of the I. R. B., who was 



MANCHESTER RESCUE, SEPTEMBER, 1867. 167 

engaged in many undertakings to serve his country. His name is 
O'Connell Harney, and he is now a resident of Brooklyn, N. Y. 

The explosion at Clerkenwell prison, London, so quickly following 
the Manchester rescue, set the English cities in a blaze of panic and 
excitement. This explosion took place to effect the rescue of Colonel 
Rickard O. S. Burke, who was imprisoned there. Colonel Burke, accom- 
panied by a young friend, a Mr. Joseph Casey, now of Paris, was arrested, 
and plans were laid for his rescue. The whole affair was under the 
direction of Captain James Murphy, an Irish-American officer. Among 
the prominent men connected with the undertaking were Michael Barrett, 
the brothers Desmond, Thomas Hamilton, now of Hartford, Conn., and 
Patrick Casey, now of Paris. Michael Barrett was captured, partly 
through his own want of caution, and suffered death upon the scaffold 
opposite the Old Bailey, London. Captain James Murphy and Patrick 
Casey escaped to France. Britain demanded their extradition from 
France. This the Empire refused, stating that they were Irish patriots 
carrying on war against their country's enemy, and as political refugees 
would find a secure asylum in France. Patrick Casey and his brave 
brothers, who afterward joined him in his exile, repaid this gallant nation 
for their shelter. When France was invaded and Paris surrounded by 
the German army, the four Casey brothers joined the French army and 
took part in the battles and sorties of that eventful winter. Three ot 
these gallant Irishmen were wounded during the siege. One, Andrew 
Casey, was seriously wounded fighting in the great sortie under General 
Ducrot, which was a stubborn and hotly contested struggle. It was 
thought by his comrades that Andrew Casey was mortally wounded at 
the time. He received the distinguished honor of receiving the Cross of 
the Legion of Honor for valor on the battlefield. With the military 
instincts of their race, these Irishmen distinguished themselves and were 
publicly complimented on parade. Such are the men that Britain seeks 
to hang or send to penal servitude. Two of the Casey brothers, Patrick 
and Joseph, still live at this time of writing in Paris. The other two 
lingered for a time after the close of the Franco-German war, but their 
wounds eventually carried them to the grave. 

Toward the close of this year, 1867, Corydon was brought to Dublin 
to give evidence against the Americans captured near Dungarvin, the 
men who had landed, as already narrated, from the Erin's Hope. When 
his presence in the city was discovered the Irish Nationalists tried to 
locate him, and succeeded in learning he was in Chancery Lane police 
office, the headquarters of the British detective system in Dublin. 
Edmond O'Donovan, who was then in the city, was consulted by some of 
the more daring spirits as to the best manner to get at Corydon. His 
base treachery had\ embittered every Irishman. The writer, who was 
closeted with O'Donovan on the evening of this proposed attack, has 
a vivid recollection of the feverish anxiety of the men who were aware of 
this new movement. All knew that Corydon was well guarded by the 
enemy, who, for their own prestige in Dublin, could not take any risks. 
The men who would undertake this affair must be men ready to meet 
almost certain capture, if not death. At that time there were a number 
of daring spirits in the city who, after the failure of the attempt to open 
a patriotic war, were keeping out of the way of the enemy's detectives 
pending their departure from their native land. 

Volunteers were quickly procured to make a raid on Chancery Lane 
station. Twenty-five men, all true and tried Nationalists, were selected 
to make this attack upon the enemy to get at Corydon and shoot him. 
To send more men would be to defeat the object aimed at, which was to 
get at the station before giving any alarm. The plan of attack was to set 



168 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

ablaze the detective depot with Greek fire, a combustible then largely 
ilepended on as an auxiliary in guerrilla warfare among the Nation- 
alists. In the confusion caused by the fire the men were to enter the 
police office, shoot every man who offered resistance until Corydon was 
found and executed. The men who undertook this daring enterprise had 
all the necessary qualifications to succeed — audacity, courage, and cool 
determination. That some of them would be shot down by the enemy's 
detectives they expected, but they well knew the pusilanimity of these 
policemen, who, if once boldly and fiercely attacked, would look to their 
own safety and ignore Corydon's, whom they of course secretly despised 
and detested. The Briton had had plenty of experience this memorable 
year as to the daring and reckless action of Irishmen in the small 
incidents that swiftly followed each other in 1867. Never, of course, 
dreaming of so audacious an action as an attack upon the police depot in 
Chancery Lane, they nevertheless were prepared for all possible con- 
tingencies. As afterward learned by the Nationalists the soldiers in 
Ship Street barracks were under arms, and the sentries at the Castle 
gate not far away from Chancery Lane were doubled. They would have 
guarded Corydon by soldiers, but they did not wish to alarm the citizens 
by any outward precautions of an unusual nature. They wished the 
world to think that all seeds of opposition to their rule in Ireland were 
crushed out, hence they used the police force for what was actual military 
duty during Corydon's sojourn in Dublin. They placed a cordon of 
armed police all around the detective station, outwardly doing duty in the 
usual manner. This cordon of police extended to the quays in the 
vicinity of the police station ; an inner cordon of police guarded any 
possible outlet through which men with hostile intent might break. The 
Irish guerrilla soldiers who were to x make the attack this night would 
almost certainly have succeeded in getting to Chancery Lane station 
in spite of the enemy's precautions but for an unforseen incident which 
alarmed the city and placed the enemy on the quivive by an unmistakable 
event. The Irish soldiers who were to make this attack that night were 
ordered to come each man with a large bottle of Greek fire, in addition 
to his loaded revolver. This Greek fire was stored away in a place not 
far from Ballybough Bridge, a suburb of Dublin. The man in charge of 
this combustible was that night made the father of a newly born child, 
and in the anxiety of his family troubles he was near an hour late in 
keeping his appointment with the men. One of these Irishmen had a 
bottle of this Greek fire with a friend keeping for him. He appointed to 
meet some of the others at Grattan Bridge, which crosses the River Liffey a 
short distance from Chancery Lane. He arrived before any of the others 
came upon the scene ; under his arm carefully wrapped in paper was the 
Greek fire bottle, and in his coat pocket was his loaded revolver. He 
looked around, and seeing none of his friends, in a half irresolute 
manner was about to recross the bridge, when one of the enemy's police 
belonging to the outward cordon of armed men challenged the Irish 
Nationalist. The Irishman peremptorily ordered this challenger to retire, 
but the policeman, drawing his revolver, commanded the Nationalist to go 
with him as his prisoner to the station. The Irishman's answer was to 
shoot, which he did with deadly effect, and the British guardian fell 
mortally wounded on the sidewalk. The report of the weapon aroused 
the policeman's comrades, and those nearest ran toward the place where 
they heard the shot. The Irishman ran swiftly up one of the many streets 
leading to Dame Street, a leading and fashionable thoroughfare which 
approaches the Castle and Chancery Lane. As he crossed the side streets 
leading to Dame Street, he came upon the inner police cordon. The 
Irishman ran up against Sergeant Kelly, who, drawing his weapon, called 




If ^; 

CAPTAIN JAMES MURPHY, 28TH MASS. VOLS. 

Leader of the Clerkenwell rescue party, which resulted in the famous 

Clerkenwell explosion. 




COL. RICKARD O. S. BURKE, ENGINEERS, U. S. VOLS. 
In trying to effect his rescue from Clerkenwell prison the celebrated explosion 

took place. 



MANCHESTER RESCUE, SEPTEMBER, 1867. 169 

the flying man to halt. The Irish guerrilla heeded not the summons but 
flew by the police sergeant. Kelly fired, but his shot took no effect. 
The Irishman came to a halt, turned swiftly around and replied to his foe- 
man's shot, and he did so with unerring aim ; the bullet entered Kelly's 
stomach and he fell apparently dead upon the street. The street where 
Kelly was shot is an unfrequented place at nightfall and the flying Irish- 
man quickly disappeared. The result of these shots was to alarm 
the city in the neighborhood of the Castle. The enemy was fully on 
the alert, and by the time the men came up after their unexpected delay 
they were told by an Irish scout that they had best retire for that night, 
for although they might fight their way successfully to Chancery Lane, 
the chances were that Corydon had been removed. The Irishmen were 
reluctantly compelled to go to their various abodes. The Fenian who shot 
the two policemen succeeded in getting to the house where he boarded 
without any other encounter with the enemy's police. He threw the bot- 
tle of Greek fire into a sewer, where it burned itself away. When he came 
upstairs he asked permission of his landlady to see her daughter for a 
moment. This young woman was an ardent Nationalist, and frequently 
helped the men in carrying or secreting anything they would not wish the 
enemy's myrmidoms to see. He was told that the young girl had retired 
for the night. " I must see her," he replied ; " this is no time to stand on 
ceremony." The young woman, hearing his voice, hurriedly wrapped her- 
self in a cloak and came out. When he saw her he handed her his revolver, 
two of the chambers of which were empty, and said quickly, " Take care 
of this for me." Changing his muddy shoes for another pair which he 
placed beside his bed he undressed and lay down. The young woman 
took the revolver and hid it in a small clothes closet which was off her 
bedroom ; a part of the flooring was broken, in this aperture she threw the 
revolver, and over it she placed her hoopskirts, then worn. A few minutes 
after the house was visited by a number of police. It was a boarding- 
house, and most of the lodgers were members of the National organization, 
but with the exception of the late comer none of them were aware of the 
projected attack on Corydon. The police had no special suspicion of this 
house, but called at all suspected houses where lodgers were kept and 
where well-known Nationalists resided. They searched the house 
thoroughly, examined the men's shoes and clothing, but they found noth- 
ing that appeared suspicious in their estimation. The women's rooms 
were likewise searched — the beds, closets, and in fact they looked every- 
where for any concealed arms. When they entered the closet where the 
revolver lay hid the young woman felt very anxious ; one of them kicking 
against the steels of the hoop petticoat said, " We had better not disturb 
the hoops anyway." They retired after their unprofitable search to pay 
another midnight visit elsewhere. Next morning Mrs. Captain Kirwan 
(the wife of the celebrated Irish Nationalist already written of in this his- 
ory), was surprised at an unusual early visit from the young Irishwoman 
who had charge of the fatal revolver the night before. She handed Mrs. 
Kirwan the revolver, saying, " Keep that for me until this evening, when I 
will call for it." The young woman had left the house but a few minutes 
when the police paid Mrs. Kirwan a visit. She hurriedly secreted the 
revolver on her person when the officials entered her room. There was 
the usual questions, and the place was searched with no results. That 
evening the young woman called, and, accompanied by Mrs. Kirwan, visited 
a house where the revolver was placed in safe keeping. It may be stated 
here that among the band of noble and devoted women who were trying 
to serve their country at this epoch, Mrs. John Kirwan was first among 
the first. During the long period when her husband was quickly chang- 
ing his abode and his place of hiding to avoid the enemy capturing him 



170 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and still determined to remain near for the fight, Mrs. Kirvvan aided in 
every way she could the work of Ireland's redemption ; carrying on a 
business which fortunately made her independent of her husband's shat- 
tered fortunes, her purse was always at the disposal of her suffering fellow 
countrywomen whose husbands were either in hiding or in the dungeons 
of the foe. On one occasion she carried a number of arms to the west of 
Ireland. The noble-hearted Edward Duffey was then in charge in Dub- 
lin ; as no convenient messenger could be had at the time who could 
travel to the west without certain capture, this heroic Irishwoman volun- 
teered her services and carried out her mission successfully. 

The day after the shooting of Policeman McKenna and Sergeant 
Kelly there was renewed excitement in Dublin and over the country. 
All kind of conjectures were hazarded as to the meaning of this shooting, 
but the newspapers and general public were all astray. Policeman 
McKenna got a grand public funeral from his comrades and the British 
sympathizers. Sergeant Kelly's life was saved by the wonderful skill of 
Sergeant Butcher of Dublin, who cut the bullet out of his stomach. 
Corydon was placed in a more secure residence, the enemy suspecting 
the meaning of the shots fired the preceding night. Several arrests were 
made over the country by the usual blundering police of the enemy, but 
with no results. This is the first time that the actual facts of that night's 
shooting affray has been given to the world. 

Among the many grand and noble characters enrolled in the National 
organization at this epoch was Edmond O'Donovan, whose name has 
already appeared in this history. The writer knew him first when quite 
a boy at the school of Military Engineers. He was the second son of 
John O'Donovan, the famous Irish scholar and one of the great Irish 
writers of the last generation. EdmOnd was the brilliant scion of a bril- 
liant family. His life was very adventurous and his death tragic. 

Edmond O'Donovan drilled the men and taught musketry classes 
throughout the country. On one occasion, to escape pursuit, he swam 
across the Shannon, and knowing there was a small constabulary station 
near, garrisoned by a few men, he made for it as a haven of refuge. 
These constabulary men were Fenians, a very rare circumstance, for 
the police were dangerous men to approach with revolutionary doctrines, 
but the brother of one man and the cousins of the others brought them 
into the Irish National ranks. They knew O'Donovan and he knew 
them. Going out on patrol they brought Edmond O'Donovan with them. 
They guided him to an illicit still, and in the company of the proprietor, 
also a Fenian, he was left. When they thought all safe they returned. 
O'Donovan described the scene as truly ludicrous to hear her British 
Majesty's guardians of the peace singing " The Green above the Red " in 
a shebeen house. These men soon after emigrated to this country. 
Mr. O'Donovan served in the French army during the Franco-German 
war. Mr. Lysaght Finnegan (member of Parliament afterward) served 
in the same regiment. They were both made prisoners of war at Orleans, 
after their regiment was nearly decimated during the three days' battles 
which preceded the first capture of that city by the Germans. 

Mr. O'Donovan afterward, as war correspondent, went through the 
Carlist campaign in Spain. During the Montenegrin war he was on 
Mouktar Pasha's staff. The Turkish commander entertained a sincere 
friendship for the Irish journalist. He afterward followed the fortunes 
of the Turkish army in Asia during the Russo-Turkish war as war corre- 
spondent of the London Daily News. He was supposed to be a non- 
combatant, but his instincts led him into many a wild adventure. One 
night during the Montenegrin campaign, after dining in the commanding 
officer's tent, he strayed away from his companions, listlessly smoking a 










INSCRIPTION AND AUTOGRAPH OF E. o'DONOVAN. 
Written by him on the back of the photograph, and presented to Mrs. P. J. P. Tynan. 




EDMOND O DONOVAN IN HIS ROBES AS KHAN OF, MERV. 
From a photograph taken in Constantinople in 1881. 



MANCHESTER RESCUE, SEPTEMBER, 1867. 171 

a cigar. He took no notice of his route or the time, when to nis horror 
he found he had strayed near a Montenegrin outpost. The mountaineer 
sentinel challenged. He was now in an awkward predicament, as he 
expressed afterward when telling the story. The smallest honors the 
Montenegrins would have paid him would be either to cut off his ears or 
slit his nose, or perhaps both. The night was fortunately dark and he 
hastened back, making the least possible noise. The Montenegrin 
quickly followed his retreating footsteps. O'Donovan sought refuge in 
a thicket. The sentinel thought he was disturbed by a wild boar and 
thrust his rifle and sword bayonet into the bush. The steel passed 
unpleasantly near the Irishman's face. Driven to bay O'Donovan drew 
his revolver, and, firing at the soldier, quickly ran toward the Turkish line. 
In his eagerness and excitement he rushed into the Danube and was 
pulled out by the alarmed Turkish patrol, who were on the alert at the 
sound of O'Donovan's shot. He was marched before his friend the 
commander-in-chief. When the general and his staff saw the journalist's 
unlucky plight they laughed. O'Donovan's adventure was a standing 
joke against him for some time. 

After the defeat of the Turkish Army by the Russians at the battle of 
Aladja Dagh, O'Donovan was carried along with the Turkish fugitives, 
the demoralized crowd of a beaten army ; they sought refuge in the then 
Turkish fortress of Kars. An irate Ottoman commander thought to bar 
O'Donovan's entrance with the army. The Irishman's blood was up and 
he would take no refusal. The Turk fired on him and the bullet whistled 
unpleasantly near O'Donovan's head ; the Irishman made a passi of his 
sword at the enraged Mahommedan, which inflicted a slight flesh wound in 
the soldier's arm as some of Moukthar Pasha's staff coming up partly struck 
aside O'Donovan's blow, and made matters all right between the combat- 
ants. To relate the career of this adventurous Irishman would fill an 
interesting volume. At the close of the Russo-Turkish war, O'Donovan 
followed the fortunes of the Russian army of invasion in Central Asia. He 
arrived there shortly after the Russian defeat at Geok Tepe ; he remained 
with them until the death of General Lazareff, their commander. The 
new general who succeeded, General Tergukasoff, ordered him to quit 
the Russian lines, as instructions from St. Petersburg forbade any corre- 
spondents to follow the army. When in Persia O'Donovan learned that 
the gallant General Skobeloff, the young Bayard of the Russian army, 
was appointed to take command of the Central Asiatic troops. The 
Irishman, who knew him personally, thought he would succeed in getting 
permission to join the Russian army. He was particularly anxious, as 
he knew Skobeloff's presence meant fighting. He sent this telegram 
from Teheran to the Russian General : " Son excellence le General Sko- 
beloff a Baku : Voulez-vous me permettre accompagner l'expedition de 
Tchikislar comme correspondent du Daily Neivs de Londres ? " In 
two days he received this reply. " O'Donovan, Teheran : Ayant les ordres 
les plus positifs de ne pas permettre a. aucun correspondent, ni Russe, ni 
etranger, d'accompagner l'expedition, il me'est a. grand regret impossible 
d'obtemperer a votre demand. — Skobeloff." 

On the receipt of this decisive refusal Mr. O'Donovan sent a tele- 
graphic message to the Russian commander, thanking him for the prompt 
courtesy of his reply and concluding with the words : " Au revoir a Merv." 
He knew the objective point of the Russian campaign, and he was deter- 
mined to arrive in Merv before the soldiers of the Great White Czar. 
His ride through the desert and his arrival at the Akhal Tekke capital was 
a marvelous feat of daring and endurance. He was at once made a 
prisoner by the Turcomans, who were astounded to see what they con- 
sidered a White Russian in their midst without any followers but a single 



172 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

servant. The Turcomans think all the inhabitants of the world outside 
of their own tribes are Russians. They class these as white and black. 
The Black Russian is an Englishman, whom they confuse with the 
natives of India, as a Turcoman chief could not be made to understand 
that Britain is an island far away. He was the first and only white man 
that entered Merv since its occupation by the tribe of Akhal Tekke Tur- 
comans until the Russian invasion. This daring adventure nearly cost 
him his life. He was under sentence of death, but his brave and manly 
demeanor and his superior intelligence won the Turcoman chieftains ; he 
could speak their language and communicated to them strange stories of 
people they had never heard of. And then he was a soldier ; this decided 
them. They elevated him from being a prisoner to the rather strange 
position of being one of their chiefs. As Khan of Merv he had a special 
flag, and was supposed to be happy for the rest of his life as an Akhal 
Tekke\ He influenced them to send him as an ambassador to Britain to 
plead their cause against the White Russian Czar, of whom they are 
now such devoted subjects and faithful soldiers. He was escorted to the 
Persian frontier and as Ambassadeur de Merv came to London. Here 
the writer renewed the friendship of early Irish Revolutionary days, and 
was pleased to find Edmond O'Donovan as faithful an Irish Nationalist 
as in their class days, twenty years gone by. 

He stopped at home for nearly one year, during which period he pub- 
lished a volume of Eastern travels, and after his prolonged stay, sailed 
for Egypt as Daily News correspondent, taking with him as secretary 
Frank Power, who as Times correspondent at Khartoum was known to 
most readers. Power was afterward killed by the Arabs, in company 
with Colonel Stewart, in their vain attempt to escape down the Nile. 
Edmond O'Donovan accompanied the fatal expedition under Hicks Pasha 
as correspondent, every one of whom were slain by the Soudanese, who 
enticed them into an ambush and destroyed Britain's advanced post. 
Thus perished this gallant and patriotic Irishman in the stranger's cause. 
His devotion to Irish independence never waned. Edmond O'Donovan 
remained a believer in making war on England in any manner feasible as 
the only hope for Irish freedom. From such like gallant spirits were the 
I. R. B. recruited. 

Miss Butler (in whose mother's home Stephens was left after his escape 
from Kilmainham) and her friend Miss Walsh made occasional visits to 
Paris for Stephens and Kelly. Miss Butler, after her mother's death, 
married Mr. Thomas Francis McCarthy, one of the editors of The Irish- 
man, who died a few years afterward. When last heard from she 
resided in Italy with some lady friend. She was a devoted and patriotic 
gentlewoman, who deserves happiness and prosperity. Miss Cecilia 
Walsh's keen satire and brilliant repartee often entertained her brother's 
friends. Among these were many of the would-be members of the Irish 
aristocracy. In social talk on art, public men, and society she often sur- 
prised these visitors at the varied fund of information she was possessed 
of. Edmond O'Donovan used to call her "Our Queen." 

To her friends she was a lovable, loyal, and affectionate girl. Ireland, 
in her generations of patriotic women, had no truer or more faithful 
daughter ; she was one who dared many risks in her country's cause. 
She fell a victim to that dread disease consumption, and the fading 
pinched face but still sparkling eyes, tried to call up a smile of welcome 
to the few friends who then visited them. 

The dashing crowd of Irish patriots who made Nicholas Walsh's 
studio and his mother's drawing room ring with their merry laughter — for 
that house was oft the home of the Irish revolutionary soldier — were 



**1 




r " 1 " •-« -T- r? 



^ d> nf 




Tifc: * 






•- 


zr 


V 


P 


n 


n> 




■__ 


— 


d 


o 




~ 


— 


o 


fl 


o 
P 


5' 


r 
> 


5' 


§ 


n 

2 


C/3 

3 


w 


"■ 


i-i 


> 


-> 


p 


re 


r 


w 


*«5 








w 


p 


W 




ITq 


P- 


> 




n 




H 




MANCHESTER RESCUE, SEPTEMBER, 1867. 173* 

either in prison, dead, or exiled. None of that gay, merry circle was 
then left in Dublin. 

The writer was the solitary Irish Nationalist at her simple funeral ; 
her remains rest in Glasnevin. If Ireland ever takes her rightful place 
among the nations, Cecilia Walsh's name should be inscribed upon the 
roll of the patriotic daughters of that struggling land. 

James Stephens, the organizer of the great Irish movement for liberty, 
and the unconscious destroyer of the edifice he helped to erect, was a 
very winning and charming man when he chose to exercise these gifts. 
He was spoiled in his estimation of himself by the adulation of humble 
although honest men, who looked upon him as a demi-god, and the 
secrecy that was necessary to keep around him gave him an exaggerated 
importance in the eyes of able men who never came in contact with him. 

The writer, who knew him, remembers meeting him on a certain 
interesting occasion. It was the night that by his orders the Provincialist 
meeting in the Rotunda was broken up — an act of unpardonable intoler- 
ance. There were Nationalists enough in Dublin to have gotten up a 
gigantic counter demonstration, and by intelligent addresses from the 
platform shown to their countrymen where the Provincialist programme 
was both destructive to national life and was actually helping the enemy 
to keep them enslaved. But smashing a meeting convinces nobody and 
increases an unnecessary bitterness and antagonism between Irishmen. 
Crossing over from the Rotunda with a friend still living in Dublin, we 
met James Stephens standing on the footway. After the usual words of 
greeting we adjourned to a neighboring house. On being asked why 
this intolerant act of upsetting a meeting was ordered, Mr. Stephens told 
the writer in sauve and persuasive tones that the men in America would 
not believe Irishmen at home were Nationalists if a public meeting of 
agitators were permitted to be held undisturbed in Dublin. George 
Hopper, Stephens' brother-in-law (who some time after pleaded guilty 
in a cowardly manner) at this juncture entered the room where we were 
seated. He told theC. O. I. R. very excitedly that the meeting had been 
broken up in disorder. Stephens' words and manner showed his elation 
and joy at the news ; no commander after a victory could be more over- 
joyed than the CO. I. R. appeared when told of this suppressed meeting. 

Irish Provincialists, when talking of this Fenian epoch, will say that 
force has been tried and found to fail. They offer this as an excuse for 
their inane folly in pursuing a career of agitation. The actual facts 
point the other way. Force has not been tried. Organization, a certain 
preparation and agitation to bring about the use of force, has been tried. 
But, unfortunately, since '98 Irish movements have always stopped 
short at putting into application the powerful structure which was built 
up with such labor and anxiety. When the organization was ready to 
fight it was stopped from doing that for which it was constructed. 
Ireland was ready to smash the enemy in September, 1865. The organ- 
ization was kept back from doing the duty it was created for, and the 
machinery went out of gear and eventually went to pieces to reveal to 
the enemy the powerful engine which might, and possibly would, have 
destroyed his tyranny in Ireland. It certainly would have strained his 
resources to destroy it, and would have cost him blood and treasure that 
could have made his repossession of the island a serious undertaking. 

_ Ireland for some years past has been wavering between two policies, 
agitating and building up revolutionary movements, to let the enemy 
suppress them without taking the field or beginning a genuine military 
campaign. These preparations that stop short of fight are then followed 
by a career of Provincial whining and begging from the enemy, and end 



174 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

by the leaders, after squandering immense sums of their generous coun- 
trymen's contributions, joining one of the enemy's factions and becoming 
British politicians. As long as they can get dupes to contribute money 
to keep up the farce they will parade their false sentiments before their 
countrymen. Many of these Provincialists were honest and well-meaning 
when they began. Perhaps some few of them cling to this folly with 
pure motives. But to the great majority it is, as John Mitchell termed 
it, one of the most powerful means ever used by mankind since man first 
tried to get money from his fellow-man under false pretenses. Such 
is the finality of all Provincial movements. They could not be honest, 
for their very foundation is false. 

Nationalists, if they begin and use force, and persevere in action and 
not perpetual preparation for action, will, if earnest and energetic, with 
all the splendid valor of the Irish race, free their land from bondage, as 
the Boers and the American colonists did. 

The task is not impossible, although very difficult. The attempt to 
regenerate a people who have been long weighed down by tyranny and 
exposed to the influence of a corrupt and demoralizing foreign govern- 
ment, is a task of infinite difficulty, and must ever encounter obstacles 
almost insurmountable. 

The Italians and the Greeks suffered all this bondage and degrada- 
tion. By force they eventually succeeded ; by force Ireland can succeed 
if she will. It is for her sons to answer : Will they become freemen or 
remain an enslaved people ? The answer must be deeds, not words. 



CHAPTER XII. 

(1875-76-) 

HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA " RESCUE — THE TWO EXPEDITIONS — IRISH- 
AMERICAN AND NORTH OF ENGLAND. 

Organizing British Soldiers in the I. R. B. Ranks — Patrick O'Leary, Military Organizer — 
Pagan O'Leary's Eccentricities — The Beggar's Religion — The Robber's Religion — 
Effect of the I. R. B. Movement upon the Military — Color Sergeant McCarthy — John 
Boyle O'Reilly — Wm. Roantree Appointed Military Organizer — Roantree's Career — 
John Devoy Appointed — Arrests of the Military — Gunner Flood in the Barrack 
Square — Flogging a Soldier — ' ' Three Cheers for the Irish Republic, " — Captain O'Con- 
nell and the Fenian Soldier — John Breslin Reaches San Francisco — He is Joined by 
Thomas Desmond — They Leave for Australia — Arrival at Freemantle — Desmond 
Leaves for Perth — John Breslin at Emerald Isle Hotel — Opening Communications 
with the Prisoners — Arrival of John King — North of England Expedition — Arrival 
of John Walsh and D. F. McCarthy — Breslin's Alarm — He Thinks they are Dublin 
Detectives — Movements Watched — In Communication with Prisoners — Breslin's 
Message — Meetings — Mutual Explanation — CatalpaoR. Bunbury — Breslin and Cap- 
tain Anthony — Arrival of Tom Brennan — Delays in Starting — The Gunboat Conflict 
— Easter Monday's Departure — Drive to Rockingham Beach — Walsh and McCarthy 
— Midnight Ride to Cut the Wires — The Phantom Ship — The Phantom Boat — 
Cruise of Steamer Georgette — Race for the Catalpa — The Police Boat — Safe on Board 
— Head Winds — Cannot Double Cape Naturaliste — Compelled to Sail Back Toward 
Freemantle — Georgette Full of Armed Men — Cannon Loaded — Artillerymen at the 
Guns — Pursuit — Shot across Catalpa s Bows — Soldiers and Sailors Armed for Fight — 
Demand for Surrender — Stern Refusal — The Stars and Stripes — "That Flag Pro- 
tects Me, I am on the High Seas" — " Fire on Me and you Fire on the American Flag " 
— The Catalpa Tacks — Georgette Steams in her Wake — Bon Voyage — Exciting Scenes 
on Shore — Walsh and McCarthy Anxiously View the Departure — Freemantle Papers 
on the Escape — Lesson of the Catalpa Rescue. 

In writing the history of the Australian rescue a sketch of the revolu- 
tionary organization in the ranks of the British Army will be a necessary 
preface. Many who have been identified with Irish affairs are familiar 
with the details of this famous rescue, but there are a number of young 
Irishmen of the rising generation whom this event may not only 
interest, but ought also to strengthen their confidence in one another. 
This expedition teaches us how faithful and secretive — when secrecy 
during action is necessary — Irishmen can be ; for this Australian rescue 
was known as a forthcoming event among Irish circles all over the United 
States and ia Australia long before the men who accomplished the rescue 
arrived at the scene of operations. The Irishmen at home were also 
cognizant of the attempt at rescue about to be made from their side, for 
there were two distinct expeditions which at almost the same time were 
leaving from widely separated countries to try to effect the same object, 
each acting independent of the other ; neither were aware of their kindred 
Nationalists' action until they met at Freemantle, the scene of the rescue. 
The ubiquitous Gael — what an important factor toward human happi- 
ness he could make, with his noble aspirations and fine intelligent 
sentiments, with all the solidity of the Teuton and the fiery dash of the 
Gaul, and with all the artistic taste for beauty, culture, and music that 
belong to the refined of the Italian and other Latin races ! Alas ! under 
generations of slavery and false teaching, how many of them become the 
antithesis to what nature intended them to be ! 

175 



17 6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

We have already referred to the valuable aid which the Irish soldiers 
in the enemy's ranks were prepared to give to their motherland in the 
event of the C. O. I. R. ordering the revolutionary organization to take 
the field for establishing in Ireland an independent republic. The Military 
Council's plan of capturing the Pigeon House Fort, with its large store of 
arms, would never have been prepared and submitted to the Dublin 
centres and also to the other skilled officers then in Ireland, but for 
the knowledge that they possessed inside the enemy's ranks men able 
and willing to further any and every enterprise undertaken to place their 
country in her rightful position among the nations of the earth. Few 
could calculate the invaluable service these men could and would 
render the cause of Irish independence. They had been the back- 
bone of the National organization from Waterloo until Catholic emanci- 
pation disarmed their resentment. Then they were falsely taught that 
Ireland was emancipated because the Catholics were permitted to enjoy 
their religion undisturbed. 

James Stephens and those who worked with him, in organizing the 
people at home for the purpose of fighting for independence, did not 
neglect the important feature of bringing the Irish soldiers in Britain's 
service into the I. R. B. — or Irish Republican Brotherhood. 

At that time the British Army was recruited by Irishmen much more 
than it is to-day. It was one of the resources for the young men who 
could not find employment at home, and valiantly they served the flag 
that was the emblem of destruction to their kith and kin. Wherever the 
British drumbeat sounds and wherever her ensign floats, it is a melan- 
choly fact for Irishmen to reflect upon, that the bones of the Irish soldier, 
who died in the service of his country's enemy, are to be found. Their 
desperate valor forms part of their foeman's history ; from Badajoz to 
Waterloo, from Alma to the assault on the Redan, from Cawnpore to 
Delhi, Irish blood flowed freely to sustain the banner of the plundering 
Briton ; and as they have robbed us of our poets, musicians, painters, and 
sculptors, and call them English, so have they robbed Ireland of the 
splendid valor of her sons ; that blood which might have been shed in the 
service of the Green Isle has been poured out like water in the ranks of 
the British in their many raids for territory and in their greed for gold. 

The British soldier at that period enlisted for twelve years, and to 
entitle the soldier to a pension, he had to re-enlist for nine years longer, 
thus giving up to the English twenty-one years of the best period of his 
manhood. Discipline was then enforced by flogging, and the life of a 
British soldier was very little better than slavery. The regiments that were 
then garrisoning Ireland were filled with Irish soldiers ; even the High- 
land regiments, that are supposed to be Scottish, had a great number of 
Irishmen in their ranks. In a very short time the regiments were filled 
with a nucleus of I. R. B. men, who in turn organized each other inside. 
This was done both by the first organizer and the soldiers in such a way 
that it is a wonder that the British did not learn of it much earlier than 
they did. This body of men were magnificent fighting material, and 
among the non-commissioned officers were soldiers of ability and skill 
more competent to command men in action than the British officers, who 
purchased their commissions and gave very little study to the profession 
of arms. 

From this organization Ireland could have obtained splendid officers 
to command and lead her insurgent army ; numbers of these men had 
seen service. Very few of the non-commissioned officers were arrested 
during Britain's panic, when she discovered how deeply Irish Nationalists 
had permeated her military. Whole regiments were quickly dispatched 
on foreign service ; she did not dare to probe too deeply, for fear of 




JOHN BRESLIN. 
Leader of the Catalpa rescue party. 



HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA '* RESCUE. 177 

demoralizing her army. Among the brave men whose names became 
prominent at that time was Color Sergeant McCarthy, a man who had 
served England most valiantly throughout the Indian mutiny. He was 
wounded and promoted for bravery on the field. They afterward treated 
him so hellishly in prison that he died a few days after his liberation. 
Another prominent name among these Irish soldiers is that of John Boyle 
O'Reilly, the patriot poet and editor of the Boston Pilot, then serving as 
a private trooper in the 10th Hussars, one of the British cavalry regi- 
ments garrisoning Dublin ; and another trooper of the same regiment, 
William McCabe, now of New York City. 

In every regiment there was an I. R. B. centre ; the Pagan O'Leary 
was first head centre for the military, reporting to Stephens direct. Irish- 
men look back upon this period with sorrow and pain. It was almost an 
unpardonable offense the way these brave men were betrayed. Their 
only object was fight, and every chance that could possibly favor Irish 
revolution was in favor of Ireland if she only took the field. As far 
back as 1862 the regiments in Ireland were full of I. R. B. men. 

In 1864, when England was pledged under Lord Palmerston to 
defend the integrity of little Denmark against Austria and Prussia, and 
when she in a cowardly manner deserted her plucky little ally, and slunk 
from facing European troops, Ireland was promised by Stephens, in the 
event of England taking the field in Denmark, that he would begin the 
insurrection. If this event had occurred it would have been like all his 
promises of this nature — Ireland's great organizer had no courage to fight. 

The man whom Stephens selected to take charge of the army organi- 
zation as head centre was a man completely unfitted for the position ; a 
man without any solidity of character. Mr. Patrick O'Leary — known as 
Pagan O'Leary, who classified Christian faith with the terms "Robber's 
and Beggar's Religion," was a most eccentric character and considered by 
many not perfectly sane. He neither drank tea, coffee, beer, wine, nor 
any stimulants ; neither did he use tobacco in any form, because he said 
they all paid duties to the British Crown. He'styled himself an ancient 
Milesian pagan, hence the name he went by. Had he remained long in 
connection with the military organization, the probabilities are that he 
would have through his indiscretions caused some important arrests, and 
but for the ability of the man who succeeded him and the perfection of the 
internal regimental organization, matters would have been in chaos. 

Pagan O'Leary was sent with letters of introduction to some non- 
commissioned officers belonging to the Athlone garrison. At this time 
so loosely did he transact his business that the enemy's detectives began 
to suspect him ; instead of obeying his instructions and delivering his 
letters, he met three boy recruits and commenced tampering with them. 
One of them went out and had the Pagan arrested, who gave the name 
of John Murphy. The letters were got on him, which was an additional 
expose, but they were so worded they gave no important clew ; these, with 
the evidence of the recruits, convicted him. The Pagan, through his own 
reckless conduct, fell into the hands of the enemy and was sent to penal 
servitude. 

The man who succeeded him in the dangerous position of military 
head centre was Wiliiam F. Roantree. He was a man of a totally differ- 
ent class from the Pagan. Mr. Roantree had had an adventurous life, 
he was born in County Kildare and was one of a number of brothers ; 
strong, stalwart Irishmen. In early life the spirit of adventure took pos- 
session of him ; he traveled in many countries, and was one of General 
Walker's soldiers on his raid into Central America. Mr. Roantree 
joined the organization at an early date in its existence ; Stephens looked 
upon him as one of his most valuable men and intrusted him with impor- 



178 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

tant missions from Ireland to America. When John O'Mahony's remains 
left America for Ireland, Mr. Roantree was the man selected by the 
Irish-Americans to escort the dead leader's body to Glasnevin. After 
the Pagan's arrest and Mr. Roantree's appointment to the post of military 
centre he made a great many important changes and left the military 
circles of the I. R. B. in a perfect condition to his successor. Mr. Roan- 
tree was arrested at the seizure of the Irish People, as has been related. 

William Roantree was succeeded by a young man named John Devoy. 
In the light of his subsequent unhappy conduct, it must be said that he 
carried out his duties faithfully and with patriotism. 

In February, 1866, with a number of others, Devoy was made prisoner 
by the enemy. But, unfortunately, when placed in the dock, he acted as 
George Hopper did, who had been so condemned for his conduct as little 
short of treason. John Devoy pleaded guilty, thereby casting a stain 
upon himself, his comrades, and the sacred cause of Ireland by imputing 
to the holy struggle for Irish freedom the stigma of guilt. This plea of 
guilty in the enemy's dock must also be characterized as the action of a 
coward, as the only reason that can be urged for it is the selfish one of 
reducing the punishment which the foeman accords to those who stultify 
their previous patriotic cause by casting a foul stain upon their motives. 
It has been often truly said that arrest by the enemy and subsequent 
imprisonment is not always proof of heroic patriotism ; there have been 
some instances where worthless men were sent to prison by the enemy in 
his blind stupidity, and many of these " suspects" traded on the ephem- 
eral glory, men who never struck a blow against the foe, but who paraded 
in free America as very terrible people when in Ireland. There have 
been numbers of men who have endeavored to serve their country by 
making war on the foe and who have been successful in eluding his 
myrmidons ; men who have never been in prison in spite of all the 
enemy's endeavors. The gallant Captain John Kirwan is a representa- 
tive of this class. 

When the British continued making arrests, during the time of Stephens' 
cowardly and supine inaction, some inroads were made upon the mili- 
tary ; flogging, imprisonment, and penal servitude followed as a matter 
of course. One prisoner, an artilleryman, Gunner Flood, was flogged 
in the presence of his regiment drawn up on parade, many of whom were 
waiting for the signal of insurrection — that signal which never came — 
as they stood drawn up around the place of torture, witnessing their 
comrade's degrading punishment, standing as immovable as custom and 
discipline required. But a flash of sympathy came from every eye as the 
bleeding soldier, pulling his tunic over the raw, bruised flesh of his cor- 
duroyed shoulder, stood up with unconquerable determination and called 
out fiercely, " Three Cheers for the Irish Republic ! Down with British 
rule in Ireland ! " The cry met many a responsive thrill in the hearts of 
the men who were standing in that barrack square ; even then they believed 
fight was in the air, and in the field they expected to resent the injuries 
on Ireland's enemy that they were daily enduring. 

Toward the close of 1865 Captain Underwood O'Connell, who was 
sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude, and who shared the feelings 
of all the men at the time, shouted fiercely in the dock when sentenced : 
" There will be an exchange of prisoners before half that time." He was 
sent as a convict to Mountjoy prison, Dublin. One day, when he was 
walking in the ring doing his hour's exercise, he noticed the sentry on 
duty belonging to the British military guard inside the prison look at him 
earnestly, and seemed anxious to speak to him. The soldier's patrol was 
in a straight line at right angles to the prisoner's recreation ring ; every 
five or six minutes touching the circle and returning on his march, O'Con- 




JOHN BOYLE O REILLY. 
From a photograph taken immediately after his escape from Australia. 



HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA " RESCUE. 179 

nell altered his movements until the sentry and himself reached the angle 
at the same instant of time, when the soldier, whose eyes beamed with 
joy at some good news he had heard, hurriedly whispered, " Cheer up, 
Captain, we will soon fight and we'll have you out," and the sentry 
pursued his march of duty. It was a ray of hope to the Irish convict, 
never, alas ! to be realized. There can be no excuse offered for the black 
treason done these soldiers and Irish independence by Stephens and his 
kindred cowardly imbeciles. 

The British began to realize that their army was honeycombed with 
Irish National sentiments, and arrests would be useless ; the Irish gar- 
rison was changed as rapidly as possible. 

A number of the convicted military prisoners, after being confined for 
some years in England's penal dungeons, were sent to Western Australia, 
where Britain considered they would be safer than in England, and save 
her from the necessity of continually keeping special guard over 
the prisons where they were confined. Their sentences were for life, 
and there was little hope that any British government would release 
these soldier prisoners. 

The Irish revolutionists at this period had been taught by their leaders 
to prepare and wait for the time to come to fight England, it never 
occurring to the powerful intellects guiding the movement that it was 
their duty to make this time, while they were waiting for Providence by 
special dispensation to create for them the time for doing what they 
were organized for. It occurred to the leaders of the Irish- American 
branch of the revolutionary movement that the rescue of these soldier 
prisoners would be an admirable and worthy act, and would be calculated 
to confer as much eclat upon the Irish cause as a blow dealt to the enemy. 
They were correct in their surmise, for so peculiarly taught have been 
the Irish people for generations as to the manner of combating their 
foe, that they looked upon this rescue as of some importance in their 
fight with the British. An incident, daring and full of prestige as it was, 
it had no bearing upon the old struggle and could produce no results. 
To divert the national mind from the real revolutionary object by organ- 
izing a movement especially for the rescue of political prisoners, and 
subordinating everything to that aim, is hardly the way to secure the 
freedom of Ireland. A silent, deadly blow dealt against the foe would 
not have any such appearance of work in their eyes as the showy glitter 
attached to this action, really brave but barren of results. 

The organization, having decided on the rescue, began with com- 
mendable energy to put the work into execution, showing what they could 
do, if they intelligently tried, in another field. The bark Catalpa was 
purchased, its nominal owner being Mr. James Reynolds of New Haven, a 
patriotic Irishman, who, with several other leaders, spared no labor to bring 
the projected expedition to a successful finish. John W. Goff, a young 
lawyer, was most prompt in collecting money and urging on the expedi- 
tion. She was sent on a whaling expedition from New Bedford, Mass. 
She was commanded by Captain Anthony, a brave American skipper, to 
whose energy and pluck no small credit is due for the success of the 
enterprise ; she had on board as carpenter one of the Dublin I. R. B., 
Dennis Duggan ; he, with Mr. Smith, an American, who was the Cata/pa's 
mate, shared with the captain the secret of her destination. The crew 
was shipped as for an ordinary whaling expedition, and knew nothing 
about the contemplated rescue. 

The Irish-American council engaged in the preparations for the rescue 
selected Mr. John J. Breslin to take command of the expedition. To 
him were intrusted all the necessary details, leaving him full discretion 
in all emergencies. One-man-power can alone undertake missions of this 



180 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

nature with any prospect of success, for if hampered by commands from 
a council, receiving their usual conflicting instructions, chaos takes the 
place of order. In this case the distance compelled them to delegate all 
authority to one man. Irishmen should remember Napoleon's maxim : 
" Better have a bad order well carried out than a good one indifferently 
executed." 

John J. Breslin, the man selected to lead and carry out the Australian 
rescue, was an Irishman of superior intelligence, and a devoted patriot. 
He had been engaged in many Irish enterprises since his first appearance 
as one of Stephens' rescuers. Mr. Breslin started from New York on his 
mission, calling en route at San Francisco on several leading National- 
ists and sympathizers in the movement. 

At San Francisco he was joined by Mr. Thomas Desmond, a brave 
and patriotic Irishman. After some little delay they started for their 
destination. Before visiting the penal colony where the military 
prisoners were confined, they opened communication with the Irish 
Nationalists of Australia, for Britain has organized foes the world around. 
After a short necessary stay among these men, they left for Western 
Australia, arriving in Freemantle on November 16. Mr. Desmond went 
on to Perth, the capital, and under an assumed name sought and got 
employment at his trade as carriage builder in that town. 

Mr. Breslin, under the name of Collins, took up his stay at the 
Emerald Isle Hotel, owned by an Irishman, Patrick Maloney. The day 
after his arrival in the colony he visited Perth and concluded from what 
he saw to make Freemantle the base of operations, being near the prison 
and nearer the coast. Mr. Desmond, who was called " The Yankee," did 
not appear to be intimate with Mr. Breslin; they lived apart and very 
seldom saw each other. 

One of the ex-military prisoners, William Foley, was at large in Free- 
mantle, and Mr. Breslin soon got in communication with him and used 
him to convey to the prisoners inside the knowledge of his presence in 
the colony and to arrange with another military prisoner, James Wilson, 
a method of communication. 

He was supposed to be by the people of Freemantle a wool buyer or 
American speculator of some sort, and his genial, pleasing disposition was 
a passport to society. Accompanied by two gentleman of the locality he 
visited the prison — or, as they styled it in the colony, "The Establish- 
ment " — about the middle of December. Mr. Donan, the superintendent, 
was exceedingly gracious to the American wool buyer, and showed him- 
self and his friends all through the building. They visited both the 
chapels where the convicts worshiped, passed along the various corridors, 
punishment cells, hospitals, cook-house, workshops, and storeroom, and 
so Mr. Breslin got a thorough knowledge of the building, and found it 
both well guarded and secure. 

Mr. Breslin succeeded in getting several interviews with Wilson, one 
of the military prisoners, and communicated through him to the other 
prisoners his plans of escape. He learned that the men he came to rescue 
were very fortunately working all day outside the prison, and that com- 
munication with them would be comparatively easy. 

The Catalpa had left New Bedford, Mass., a long time before on her 
whaling cruise, but was not expected to reach Bunbury before the end of 
January. To avoid any suspicion which might be aroused by his staying 
too long in Freemantle, Mr. Breslin left on a tour through the colony 
and on some apparent business, visiting Perth, Guildford, York, Northam, 
Newcastle, and the smaller villages on his route. 

January, February passed, and March arrived, but no news of the 
New Bedford whaler. The long wait and uncertainty was making Mr. 




CAPTAIN CHAS. UNDERWOOD O CONNELL, 

99th Regiment N. G. S. N. Y. 
Sentenced to penal servitude by the British in 1865. 



HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA *' RESCUE. 181 

Breslin anxious ; he could do nothing without the Catalpa, whose arrival 
off the coast he was looking out for daily. In the meantime the Irish in 
New Zealand, anxious to assist Mr. Breslin in his work, collected a large 
sum of money and sent Mr. John King, a patriotic Irishman, who arrived 
in the colony by the steamer Georgette from King's Sound early in March 
with the gold. The men in New Zealand were determined that Mr. 
Breslin should not run short of money. Mr. King had been engaged in 
mining operations in Australia ; he passed in Freemantle as a gold miner. 
A rumor of gold fields having been discovered in the Northwest 
accounted for his arrival in the colony, where he passed under the name 
of Jones. During this long delay Mr. Breslin and Mr. Desmond only 
occasionally met ; sometimes this would happen in Perth and sometimes in 
Freemantle, Mr. Desmond was generally known by the soubriquet of 
-" The Yankee." There was no suspicion of Mr. Desmond, who continued 
to work at his trade in the carnage factory owned by a man named 
Sloan. 

About the end of March an American whaler named the Canton put 
into one of the ports of the colony named Bunbury. Mr. Breslin tele- 
graphed her captain, inquiring if he had any news of the Catalpa of New 
Bedford ; the captain replied he had not heard anything of her. Mr. 
Breslin was now beginning to feel very uneasy ; any delay of the ship 
might upset all his plans. One Monday in March he left for Bunbury, 
•having engaged a seat in the mail car leaving Perth for that town, a dis- 
tance of 1 20 miles, and waited there for some time. But there was no 
news of the long expected Catalpa. On the following Saturday evening 
he left Bunbury to return to Freemantle, taking passage in a small coast- 
ing vessel called the May. 

While the Irish-Americans and their friends were preparing to get 
the military prisoners away from British punishment, the men at home 
were working for the self-same object, completely unconscious of the fact 
that their brethren in the States were making similar preparations. A 
letter, which got out surreptitiously from the " Establishment " in Free- 
mantle, found its way to the North of England into the hands of some of 
the Irish workers residing there. Immediately a call was made on the 
men in Ireland and Britain to subscribe funds to rescue these men from 
captivity. Out of their scanty earnings they gave with no less generosity 
than their brethren in other countries, and two well-known and tried 
Nationalists were selected to carry out the escape. The letter which 
came to them from Freemantle gave them some information as to how 
this rescue could be effected. Their plan was to bring with them ample 
funds, and having put themselves in communication with the prisoners, 
through a safe channel provided for them, charter the first American 
whaler that should put into Western Australia for wood and water and 
on board of which they might expect to find, if not countrymen, certainly 
anti-British men who would undertake for a stipulated sum to land the 
prisoners and themselves on American soil. 

The two selected to carry out this enterprise were John Walsh and 
Dennis Florence McCarthy, men who were old-time workers in the cause 
of Ireland. They left on their mission of mercy and journeyed to the 
antipodes, and after the usual chances and delays of such a voyage came 
to Freemantle on board the Georgette from Knip Sound. 

Whenever the Georgette arrived at Freemantle she brought with her 
some new arrivals to the colony, and it was very often Mr. Breslin's 
custom to stroll down and see the passengers disembark. The few 
strangers who visited the colony were easily recognized. Mr. Breslin 
took no more special notice of Mr. Walsh and Mr. McCarthy than of any 
other arrivals. Both of them were strangers to him and he to them. 



182 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The following morning he was looking out of the window of the 
Emerald Isle Hotel, when he saw the two arrivals of the day before pass 
down the street. It was not usual for new arrivals to delay in Freemantle, 
and something about the appearance of the men led Mr. Breslin to think 
they were Dublin police detectives. He called Mr. King, who was in the 
hotel, and communicated his suspicions to him. He instructed King to 
look them up and cautiously make what inquiries he could relative to the 
new arrivals. He feared that something had leaked out in America 
during the long delay, and that the British had sent out these men to see 
if they could recognize any strangers in Freemantle, and also to place the 
local authorities au courant as to the information possessed by the home 
officials. 

Both Mr. Walsh and Mr. McCarthy lost no time after their arrival in 
placing themselves in communication with the prisoners. Immediately 
they did so Mr. Breslin's anxiety was relieved. He knew they were 
brother Nationalists on a similar mission, and his next care was to see 
that no action of theirs would unconsciously interfere with his previously 
prepared plans. So he sent Mr. King with a message requesting them 
to call up to the hotel that evening, as he wished particularly to see and 
talk with them. 

When Messrs. Walsh and McCarthy received this message it was their 
turn to feel anxious ; but they determined to see what was in it, so they 
accepted the invitation and came as requested. In a few minutes the men 
understood each other, and mutual explanations ensued. Both Mr. 
Walsh and Mr. McCarthy found every possible provision had been made 
by Mr. Breslin to succeed in the enterprise, and that their duty was to 
rest quietly and await events. 

On March 29, 1876, the bulletin board at Freemantle announced that 
the Catalpa had put into Bunbury the day before, March 28. Mr. 
Breslin was overjoyed. It relieved his mind of the suspense which he 
had felt at the whaler's delay. As soon as the telegraph office was 
opened he sent this message to Captain Anthony on board the whaler : 
"Any news from New Bedford? When can you come to Freemantle ?" 
In the afternoon he received an answering message : " No news from 
New Bedford. Shall not come to Freemantle." Immediately commu- 
nicating the news of the ship's arrival to his friends, he took the mail car 
the next morning for Bunbury, where he arrived at 4 p. m., Friday, 31st. 
Captain Anthony was ashore expecting him, and he explained to Mr. 
Breslin what he proposed doing with the Catalpa. His crew were in a 
very discontented state, and attempted to desert the ship. Four of them 
stole away with one of the ship's boats and took to the bush. Three of 
them were captured and were put in irons as prisoners on board, and the 
fourth was arrested by the local authorities and confined in Bunbury 
lockup. This was rather disheartening news for Mr. Breslin. to hear, but 
there was nothing for it but to go through with the venture. 

Mr. Breslin selected a place called Rockingham as the place for 
embarkation. This part of the coast was about twenty miles south of 
Freemantle. It was conveniently situated at the head of the sound, and 
a narrow passage between it and Garden Island led out to sea. Mr. 
Breslin was anxious to have Captain Anthony examine the coast about 
Rockingham, so that he could know the best position to have the Catalpa. 
By sending a whaleboat to Rockingham and having the ship outside 
about sixteen miles, they could pull out, he calculated, in about five 
hours. So he arranged for the captain to accompany him to Freemantle 
on board the Georgette, which was due to reach Bunbury with the Colonial 
mails oh Saturday, April 1. By this arrangement the captain could take 
an exact survey of the coast and select some suitable place where Mr. 



HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA " RESCUE. 183 

Breslin, on his arrival with the escaped prisoners, could conveniently 
embark the men. By this arrangement, Mr. Breslin hoped to have the 
captain back in time to put to sea and make him free to make the rescue 
on the morning of Thursday, April 6. 

It is well known to most Irish Nationalists how many men can be pro- 
cured for desperate enterprises, and if Mr. Breslin required more assist- 
ance at Freemantle, he had a sufficiently numerous body of good men in 
America or Australia to draw upon. In his case additional assistance 
was additional embarrassment. Some of his friends in New York sent 
to him a gentleman from that city, Mr. T. Brennan. It so happened that 
the steamer Georgette, which Captain Anthony and Mr. Breslin were wait- 
ing for to bring them up to Freemantle, was conveying a fresh American 
arrival to the colony. Mr. Brennan recognized the Catalpa and came 
ashore at Bunbury. Mr. Breslin was glad to meet him ; but his presence 
was particularly awkward at the time, as there were as many men as could 
be used to effect the escape, and additional help might excite suspicion. 
He could not send him on board the Catalpa without risking the suspicion 
of the sailors, as their delay off the coast was uncertain. He decided to 
bring his friend, the new arrival, to Freemantle, and do the best he could. 

On the following Sunday morning Captain Anthony was pointed out, 
by his friend Breslin, the position he had selected ; and they noticed 
from the bridge of the Georgette the coast outside Rockingham, Garden 
Island, Rottnest, and other principal landmarks. 

As they entered Freemantle harbor, they found anchored there her 
Britannic Majesty's gunboat Conflict, a fast sailing schooner-rigged ship, 
carrying two guns and thirty men. She had arrived there the previous 
day. 

The wind was light and variable, and the Catalpa required a stiff 
breeze to make any fast sailing, and all things considered, the risk was too 
great to attempt escape without probable capture. The presence of the 
gunboat delayed the attempt to escape. On the following Monday even- 
ing, Breslin learned that this gunboat came to Freemantle on an annual 
tour ; she would proceed thence to Adelaide or Sydney, and would prob- 
ably extend her stay in Freemantle harbor over eight or nine days. He 
was also told that another gunboat was daily expected, to take Governor 
Robinson to visit the Northwest. The captain of the whaler decided to 
overhaul his vessel and have her painted, delaying as long as possible in 
putting the necessary wood and water on board, as they had no alterna- 
tive but to await the departure of the gunboat. Captain Anthony was 
•driven out to Rockingham, where Mr. Breslin explained to him in detail all 
his plans to rescue the military prisoners, and showed him the place 
where he proposed to embark. The road, for the first ten miles, between 
Freemantle and Rockingham was a good road for the colony. But from 
the Ten Mile Well to Rockingham hotel, a distance of about six miles, 
it was a very heavy road, cut up with sand patches. From the hotel to 
the beach was a mere track of four miles, through sand and brush. 
They drove the whole distance, without stopping, in two hours and 
twenty minutes. 

On the following Thursday Captain Anthony left Freemantle to join 
his ship off Bunbury, but previous to his departure they arranged a code of 
private signals, so that Mr. Breslin could communicate with him by tele- 
graph. When the gunboat sailed, Mr. Breslin was to telegraph, " Your 
friend N. or S. has gone home," which would convey to the whaler that 
•" the war vessel had gone north or south, all right ; start from Bunbury." 
In the event of the arrival of the other gunboat to take the Governor 
aiorthwest, he was to wire, " Jones has gone overland to Champion Bay. 
When do you clear out of Bunbury?" And when the Governor had 



184 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

departed and the coast was clear, " Jones has gone to Champion Bay ; 
did not receive a letter from you," meaning " All right again." 

Four days after Captain Anthony's departure to join his ship, the 
Conflict sailed for Albany, and the Catalpas captain was sent a telegram 
stating " Your friend S. has gone home ; when do you sail ?" On the 
following (Wednesday) morning Captain Anthony's reply was received. at 
the Emerald Isle Hotel : "I sail to-day. Good-by. Answer if received. 
G. Anthony." 

In the meantime the Irish expedition to Freemantle was remaining 
quiet ; both of the gentlemen who had come so long a journey to carry 
out a certain purpose, were now working in with the men whom they 
found on the scene of operations before them. Mr. Breslin, from the 
nature of things, could not use their services much in aiding him, but as 
their communicatio'ns with the prisoners were easily accomplished : he 
communicated to Messrs. Walsh and McCarthy Captain Anthony's mes- 
sage, so that they could convey, through Wilson, to the prisoners the 
final details. The sailing, according to Captain Anthony's telegram, 
would have the ship ready for sea off Rockingham on Friday morning, 
and that being Good Friday, a Government holiday, the men would be 
confined inside the " Establishment," and nothing could be done. So Mr. 
Breslin immediately telegraphed the Calalpa : "Your telegram received. 
Friday being Good Friday, I shall remain in Freemantle, and start for 
York on Saturday morning. I wish you may strike oil. Answer if 
received." At 7.30 p. m., the following reply was handed in at the hotel 
in Freemantle : ''Yours received. Did not leave to-day. Wind ahead 
and raining. Sail in the morning. Good-by." 

This fixed the start for Saturday morning, and the final arrangements 
were to be carried out. Mr. Breslin, at the last interview he had with 
Wilson, arranged a signal he was to make him, which he was to under- 
stand meant " Get ready ; we sail to-morrow morning." This signal he 
could not give on Friday, as they were confined inside in consequence of 
the holiday. But availing himself of the willing services of Messrs. 
Walsh and McCarthy, he had a letter conveyed to Wilson that morning, 
Mr. John Walsh bringing him back an answer that the letter had been 
delivered to Wilson. The letter contained full instructions as to the 
prisoners' action the following Saturday morning, and the final sentence 
contained these words : "We have money, arms, and clothes ; let no 
man's heart fail him, for this chance can never occur again." 

Mr. Desmond was in constant communication with his friend Breslin 
as to the condition of affairs. He was quite a favorite among the people 
in Perth, and was in the habit of driving out with the fastest pair of 
horses in the colony. He did this for the purpose of warding off any 
suspicion, which might happen when the time for escape came. He 
drove over to Freemantle, arriving there on Friday evening, with a four- 
wheeled wagon, which would accommodate half the number who were 
to start the following morning. Mr. Breslin had supplied himself with 
a similar conveyance, which he engaged for Friday and Saturday. He 
drove out with them on Friday to see if the horses went well together. 
All looked well for the morning start, but on Mr. Breslin's arrival at the 
hotel after his drive he found the following telegram awaiting his coming. 

" Freemantle 14, 4, 1876, 8:18 p. m. 
"J. Collins, Esq.: 

" It has blown heavy. Ship dragging both anchors. Can you advance 
more money if needed ? Will telegraph again in the morning. 

" G. Anthony." 

Mr. Breslin, when he read this message, was very anxious to com- 



HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA " RESCUE. 185 

municate its contents to the prisoners, so that they would understand the 
delay. Cranston, one of the soldier convicts, was employed as post mes- 
senger to come in from the prison for letters. It was a criminal offense 
for anyone to be seen speaking to a convict ; they were compelled to walk 
in the centre of the roadway and avoid the footpaths, and it was a penalty 
of solitary confinement for these prisoners to in any way communicate 
with a civilian. Mr. Breslin was aware of these rules, but determined to 
meet Cranston, his only chance at that hour to communicate the post- 
ponement to the men inside. Halfway between the " Establishment " 
and Freemantle postoffice was a lonely shebeen house, by which Cranston 
should pass. This was the only place Breslin could make the desired 
interview. He was successful. When he got there, he met Walsh and 
McCarthy. The telegram was read to Cranston and so previous orders 
were countermanded. 

Desmond, King, Brennan, and Breslin were all disappointed at this new 
mishap ; they feared that the ship, having dragged both anchors, would 
drift on to the bar and delay the departure for some weeks. Mr. 
Desmond returned to Perth to resume work and wait the course of 
events. On the following Saturday morning Breslin received this 
message : 

" I shall certainly sail to-day. Suppose you will leave for York 
Monday. Good-by. "G.Anthony." 

To which was wired the reply : 

"Your telegram received. All right. Glad you got off without 
damage. Au revoir. " J. Collins.'' 

Immediately Breslin engaged the same wagon and pair. of horses for 
Sunday and Monday, and he dispatched King on a horse which he had 
purchased for any emergency, to order Desmond to turn up. He then 
walked down to the jetty where Wilson was working, and catching his 
eye, gave him a prearranged signal which meant, " We start to-morrow 
morning." As the following day was Sunday and the prisoners were 
confined on that day, Wilson was puzzled when he got this signal. 
Breslin, knowing this, walked across to where the convicts were working, 
and in a careless, listless manner got sufficiently near to Wilson to 
whisper, " Monday morning," without the warden or any of the other 
prisoners taking any notice. 

When Mr. Desmond received the message to start he found to his 
chagrin that the splendid pair of horses he had been accustomed to drive 
were engaged by some people to go to York. Easter Monday being a 
holiday, all the best teams were engaged ; he offered a hostler two pounds 
to get him a good pair of horses, but could not succeed. He arrived at 
2 p. m. on Easter Sunday with a pair of poor looking cattle. Mr. 
Breslin was also disappointed. He found that Albert, who owned the 
horses which he had engaged, had hired out the best animal of the pair 
to Mr. Stone, the superintendent of water police, to go to Perth, as his 
brother-in-law, the sheriff, had been thrown from his horse and was 
lying there in a critical condition. Mr. Breslin was also told he could not 
have the horses on Sunday; that the clerk had done wrong in hiring them, 
but that on Monday morning he could have the team without fail. 

On Sunday evening all things looked favorable for a speedy departure 
the following morning. Mr. John Walsh and Mr. Dennis Florence 
McCarthy having to remain behind in the colony, they required to be 
very careful not to be seen in Mr. Collins' company — the name Breslin 
was known by. The eve of final preparations had come, and they visited 
Breslin to wish the rescuers Godspeed and render what final assistance 



i86 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

they could to expedite the work they were all anxiously engaged in. 
They offered Mr. Breslin money, of which they had plenty, and which 
they brought back to England with them. But he had more than he 
required, the additional supply from Australia meeting all demands. Mr. 
Walsh and Mr. McCarthy had hired horses ; their duty was to ride into 
the country and cut the telegraph wires between Perth and Albany, 
which would deprive the Governor of means of communicating with the 
gunboat Conflict, which was lying there, and sending this vessel on their 
track to intercept their passage to the Indian Ocean round Cape Leeuwin. 

At half-past five on Easter Monday morning Breslin had the hostler 
called up and the horses put to the wagons and the valises stored in the 
vehicles. Brennan was up and dressed. King and Desmond were called 
and the voyagers got ready to leave the colony without the usual permis- 
sion from the Governor, as Western Australia being a penal colony no one 
could leave, or was supposed to, without a written passport. Brennan 
left for Rockingham at 6 a. m. At 7 o'clock a. m. Breslin went to 
the stables and found a pair of horses and a light four-wheeled trap, 
harnessed and ready waiting. Desmond got his trap ready by half-past 
seven ; the arrangement was that he should drive from Freemantle 
by a side street, which, after a few turns, took him on to the Rock- 
ingham road. Breslin was to leave Freemantle as if going to Perth 
through the High Street, and turning sharp by the prison, get into 
the Rockingham Road. King, who was well mounted, was to remain 
behind, and when they had started some time he was to follow on the 
same road, bringing them news if there had been any alarm sent out. 
John Walsh and Dennis Florence McCarthy left at an early hour from 
Perth, well mounted, to carry out their part of the work. Getting into 
the woods they dismounted, and cutting the telegraph wires, twined them 
around the trees so that it would take a long delay, not only to repair 
them, but to find out where the mischief was done. 

Breslin drove up the principal street, passed slowly by the "Estab- 
lishment," passed the pensioner's barracks, passed the warden's quarters, 
and walked quietly by on to the Rockingham road. By this time the 
prisoners were beginning to assemble for parade ; the Irish military 
prisoners understood that the wagons would be waiting for them from a 
quarter to eight ; that the nearest wagon would be within five minutes' 
walk of the prison, and that they would wait there until nine o'clock. 
Desmond drove up and passed the vehicle containing Breslin. Driving 
up to a shaded part of the road they divided the hats and coats for the 
prisoners, three in each wagon. Then Breslin turned and drove back 
toward Freemantle, followed by Desmond. A few minutes later they 
saw three men in the prison dress wheel round and march down the 
Rockingham road. They were Wilson, Cranston, and Harrington. 
Breslin motioned them to get into Desmond's trap, which they quickly 
did and then Desmond drove away. The first three were scarcely seated 
in Desmond's conveyance when Breslin espied three other men coming 
toward them, one of these was carrying a spade and another a tin 
kerosene can. As soon as they came near enough to be recognized 
they flung away spade and oil can and made for Breslin's trap. The 
horses at this moment got restive, but after a little they were quieted and 
the last arrivals, who were Darragh, Hogan, and Hassett, then took 
their seats in Breslin's vehicle. By this time Desmond was speeding 
fast out of sight, and King riding up informed Breslin that all was quiet 
when he left. 

The prisoners, from their long years in confinement and their good 
conduct, had been promoted to what was called among the convicts the 
position of constable ; this gave them greater freedom than the other 



HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA " RESCUE. 187 

prisoners, so they could talk and freely communicate with each other. 
Wilson and Harrington worked in the same gang, constructing harbor 
works. Hogan was a painter, and was engaged painting the house of 
one of the officials outside the prison walls on the morning of the escape. 
Cranston was employed in the stores and as messenger occasionally. 
Uarragh was a clerk and attendant to the English chaplain ; he enjoyed 
considerable facilities of communicating with the other prisoners. He 
took Hassett with him that morning to plant potatoes outside the prison 
wall. Cranston passed out as if going on a message. He overtook the 
warder who was marching the working party to which Wilson and 
Harrington belonged. Cranston showed the warder a key and told 
him he was sent to take Wilson and Harrington to move some furni- 
ture, so the warder at once told them to leave with Cranston. Dar- 
ragh took Hassett as if going to work in the same direction ; they 
were joined by Hogan, who made an excuse to the warder for tem- 
porary absence, and so they managed to meet Breslin at the place 
appointed. The whole party then drove off and reached Rockingham at 
10.30 A. M. 

The whaleboat was waiting on the beach and the party quickly stow- 
ing themselves on board the boat shoved off. Captain Anthony, who 
was waiting for Breslin's party, gave the order " Out with the oars and 
pull for your lives ! Pull as if you were after a whale ! " The boat's 
crew were somewhat surprised at so many strangers armed with rifles and 
revolvers, and did not know what to make of the whole affair. However, 
under their captain's orders they tugged at the oars and pulled with right 
good will together, for they knew something unusual was the cause of 
these strange visitors. When they were about two or three miles from the 
shore they saw two mounted police ride up to the beach from where they 
embarked. The police drove the teams which brought them from Free- 
mantle toward the Rockingham jetty. About noon they were clear of 
Garden Island and were pulling seaward ; then hoisting the whaleboat's 
sails, they stood away to the southeast in search of the Catalpa; they 
held this course until four o'clock in the afternoon, and getting no sight 
of the ship, Captain Anthony ordered sails to be taken in and changed 
the boat's direction westward ; about half-past five the lookout man sighted 
the Catalpa about fifteen miles ahead, when the men bent to their oars 
with redoubled vigor to try and get alongside their vessel before dark. 
After about an hour's hard pulling they saw they were gaining on the 
ship. They could see her topsails quite plain from the crest of the 
waves. Sail was again set and they made for the ship as fast as possible. 
The weather was gloomy with rain squalls, so they were all thoroughly 
drenched. The whaleboat was swiftly moving along under sail and they 
saw with delight that they were rapidly gaining on the Catalpa; the 
whole boat's crew, sixteen men in all, were perched on the weather gun- 
wale, with the water rushing in from time to time at the lee side ; about 
seven o'clock a squall struck them, carrying away the mast, which broke 
short off at the thwart, and by the time they had stowed away broken 
mast and sail, the ship disappeared in the darkness. They again put 
out their oars and pulled for about three hours in the direction, as they 
thought, of the ship, but they could see no light to reward their endeavors 
with success. They then hoisted a jib on an oar and steered the same 
course over which they supposed the Catalpa had gone. All this time 
there was an ugly sea running and the weather was threatening to be 
more severe. Morning broke and found sixteen anxious faces peering 
through the struggling light in search of the missing whaler. Nearing 
seven o'clock they again sighted the ship, and with eagerness they steered 
for her. The lookout on board the Catalpa could not espy the whale- 



l88 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

boat in the trough of the angry sea, but their ship was fortunately at this 
time sailing toward them. 

In the meantime all was excitement in Freemantle. When the news 
of the escape of the six military prisoners reached the Governor, it flashed 
upon him at once, as they were political convicts, that a scheme of rescue 
had been attempted ; only two mounted police were left in Freemantle, 
their comrades having gone on duty at the Perth regatta ; these were 
sent out to scour the neighborhood, when they came on the track of the 
vehicles, reaching Rockingham beach at the time the prisoners had got 
safely off in the whaleboat. On their return to Freemantle they reported 
the departure of the men for sea, and they told of empty wagons and 
the riderless saddlehorse they found on the beach. The Governor saw he 
had heen outwitted by a well-laid and long-matured plan. John Walsh 
and Dennis F. McCarthy returned to Freemantle after their mission of 
cutting the wires ; they were secretly overjoyed that their friends had 
got away, but were still anxious until final success had been accomplished. 
The inhabitants of Freemantle, or a greater portion, were in sympathy 
with the escaped men, not on account of politics or nationality, but that 
feeling which humanity implants in the human heart of clinging to the 
weaker side in the struggle. The escape was the sole subject of con- 
versation that day, both in Freemantle and Perth ; the people of the 
former town were surprised when they learned that the quiet, amiable, 
companionable Mr. Collins, whom they all knew so well, was one of those 
dreadful Fenians. It has always been England's strong point to spread 
broadcast all sorts of slander and calumny against her foes, and she had 
painted the Fenians in such odious colors that people expected to find in 
one the incarnation of a living fiend. During the Crimean war she 
flooded the market with literature accusing the Russians of the most 
unheard of infamies and despotism ; every work of fiction thus issuing 
from the British press contained accounts of the horrors and brutalities 
of Siberia, the slavery in the Ural mines, Russia's brutal war against 
Schamyl the great Circassian chief, as if good, pious England had no 
tyrannies and manufactured famines to be placed at her own door. She 
then by her writings so inflamed the public mind that an intense national 
hatred to all Russia and Russians had taken possession of the Briton, 
and additional animosity to add to their old traditional hatred of French- 
men, both of which still survive. When the first Irish political prisoners 
were arrested she briefed to her Prosecuting Counsel Charles Barry, now 
judge, a statement of the crimes they purposed to commit: hamstringing 
of cattle, massacre of the landlords, priests, and bishops, and such unheard 
of infamies that they even overshot the mark in their anxiety to fasten 
outrages and crime upon the men and the movement. 

The good people of Western Australia were astounded to know that 
the quiet, gentlemanly men who lived among them so long were these 
horrid Fenians ; but the men in gaining respect for themselves by their 
conduct, had unconsciously elevated the cause they represented among 
the people with whom they came in contact. The people of Perth liked 
" The Yankee," as they called Mr. Desmond — his jolly, open-hearted 
manner, his bonhomie and cheerful disposition. He was also a great 
favorite among the ladies, and great was the wonder among the fair 
dames of Perth when they learned the news that instead of going on his 
honeymoon, as whispered about, their social, pleasant friend was a mem- 
ber of that terrible community called Fenians. There was something 
chivalric in the risks ran by these men in effecting the escape of their 
imprisoned comrades, which elevated Mr. Desmond into the position of 
a hero, and bright eyes and tiny ears were open for news that their knight 
errant had got off safely. Early the following morning the people col- 



HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA " RESCUE. 189 

lected on the quay at Freemantle to watch the Georgette pursue the 
American whaler, for. the news had been noised abroad that the Governor 
had chartered her for that purpose. In the crowd standing on the quay, 
looking out to sea no less anxiously than the rest, were their Irish friends, 
John Walsh and D. F. McCarthy, and when the Georgette steamed out 
from Freemantle harbor, the great majority of those standing there were 
hoping that her mission would be unsuccessful. 

In the meantime the weary seafarers were steering for the Catalpa y 
and that good ship was apparently sailing for them. In a short time the 
men in the open boat espied the steamer coming out of Freemantle har- 
bor with all sail set. It was her regular day for sailing to Albany, and 
they watched her course with great anxiety, as to whether she was leav- 
ing on her regular mission with the colonial mails, or had been sent out in 
search of them. A little further observation convinced them she was out 
of her regular course for Albany, and in a few minutes they were con- 
vinced she was steering straight for the Catalpa, which she must have 
seen before they did. They put on redoubled exertion at the oars, and 
with sail set they made what speed they could to reach their vessel. In 
a few moments they saw that the Georgette was coming upon them fast, 
and their only chance of eluding capture was to lower their sails and 
remain quiet, hoping that that which was a misfortune in the case of the 
Catalpa, would be their salvation with the Georgette — escaping observation. 
In a few minutes the sail was housed and they remained resting on their 
oars in the trough of the sea. The commander of the Georgette evidently 
expected that they had long since got on board the Catalpa, and no look- 
out was kept for the boat, the Georgette steaming straight for the whaler. 
When the Georgette had passed them some distance, they pulled imme- 
diately in her wake. It was the safest course they could pursue, near- 
ing their ship and continuing to remain unseen by the people on the 
Georgette. 

At this time the whaler was about five miles away. Soon the steamer 
came alongside the Catalpa. The men in the open boat could see the 
steamer come up to the whaler, and after remaining alongside for about 
ten minutes she steamed slowly away, the whaler holding on her course. 
The Georgette, when she sheered off from the Catalpa, pursued her course 
more inshore, but in the same direction as the whaler, which was now 
sailing away from her boat that contained the rescued prisoners. The 
Georgette steamed closer inshore. She was plainly on the lookout for the 
whaleboat, but fortunately for them did not see the missing craft. She 
steamed along, pursuing the same course as the ship, which sailed on the 
wind, heading south-southeast. Both Catalpa and Georgette kept increas- 
ing their distance from Bresiin and his party. About half-past eleven 
the ship was about twelve and the steamer eight miles from the boat. 
The course of the steamer was carefully watched by the anxious rescuers, 
and they were satisfied that she was not steaming on her usual route to- 
Bunbury ; she was too far inshore. After a little time the Georgette came 
right around, and under sail and steam made for Freemantle, carefully 
examining the coast inshore for the escaping party's boat. The Catalpa ' s 
boat was now in a dangerous position. If the steamer altered her course 
a little more out to sea she would be seen and captured. 

They had no alternative but to pursue the course they were trying to 
make and endeavor to come up with their fast disappearing ship, the 
Catalpa ; those on board the whaleboat called her the phantom ship, she 
was so often disappearing from their gaze, and the more they strove to 
get near her the further off she sailed. The Georgette was now nearing 
the boat fast and getting every moment in dangerous proximity to them, 



190 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and they began to think their chances of remaining longer unseen were very 
slight. The men were ordered to He as low as possible in the boat ; every 
man in that whaleboat passed an anxious few minutes as the steamer 
came nearer and nearer to the object of her search. About half-past 
twelve the Georgette passed across their wake so very close that they 
could distinguish the lookout man at the masthead and the men on deck. 
Every instant they expected to see her turn and bear down on them, but 
fortunately for them, if the Catalpa was a phantom ship, they were a 
phantom boat, for neither friend nor foe appeared to be able to see 
them. 

The Georgette, when she had overhauled the Catalpa, made inquiries 
for the missing prisoners ; this query gave the desired information to the 
mate of the whaler, Mr. Smith, who was in charge of that ship, that the 
rescue had been accomplished. This made those on board now more 
eager in their search for the captain and the boat. 

The Georgette steamed away from the prisoners she was in search of, 
and when she had gone from them some distance, and began to sink her 
hull on the horizon, Captain Anthony made sail for his vessel. They 
now stood out under sail after the Catalpa and began gradually to near 
the whaler, and as quickly she loomed up before them. Wilson was 
placed in the bow of the boat, holding aloft a blue flag to attract the 
attention of those on board the ship. About half-past two p. M. it became 
evident the Catalpa had at last sighted them, for she altered her course and 
made for the boat. A few minutes after the Catalpa changed her course 
they sighted another boat coming out under sail, making for the ship. 
The newcomer was about the same distance on the land side from the 
Catalpa as Breslin's boat was to seaward. In a few minutes they recog- 
nized her as the water police cutter of Freemantle, and it now became a 
race which of them would make the whaler first. The police cutter, on 
sighting the boat containing the prisoners, crowded on all sail and made 
for the whaleboat, with the intention of intercepting her course toward 
the Catalpa and so capture her, but even if she had got alongside the boat 
she would not have brought her prisoners to Freemantle without a fight ; 
the rescuers and the soldiers were all armed and were determined not to 
yield without a struggle. The excitement of this triangular cruise had 
the Irishmen's blood up ; the race was an interesting spectacle to those 
on shore, and glasses were leveled by many an anxious and excited 
looker-on to see the sequel. About three o'clock the whaleboat came 
upon the weather side of the ship as the police cutter wasnearing fast on 
the lee side. The prisoners and their friends quickly scrambled on deck, 
when the whaleboat was hoist up into the davit, almost instantaneously. 
At that instant the police cutter came alongside. Mr. Breslin remained 
on deck while the others went below. 

" What shall I do now, Captain ? " said Smith, the mate. 

" Hoist the flag and stand out to sea," was the reply. 

Captain Anthony was now at his post in command of the ship, and 
never was maneuver more promptly executed or in a more seamanlike 
manner. 

The Stars and Stripes were flying at the peak : the ship wore, and was 
standing on her course inside of two minutes. The police cutter was 
dropping alongside. As the Catalpa sailed past, Mr. Breslin raised his 
hat and said, " Gentlemen, you have lost the race." As the cutter dropped 
astern the officer in charge responded by shouting back, " Good-by, 
Captain, good-by ! " 

The new arrivals on the Catalpa felt in a very cramped condition ; 
they had been for twenty-eight hours in an open boat, under rain and 
washed by the waves, without any food or drink for the greater portion 



HISTORY OF THE •' CATALPA " RESCUE. 191 

of the time, and the cheering uncertainty as to whether they were to 
make the Catalpa or the "Establishment" with its chain gang and 
convict suit. Some supper warmed them up and circulated the blood 
more freely through their chilled and cramped limbs. After supper they 
walked on deck, enjoying a smoke and taking what they hoped to be the 
last look at the coast of Western Australia, the ship working to windward 
under a light breeze in the direction of Cape Naturaliste. 

All hands retired for the night at 9 p. m., watch on deck excepted. 
The men who had been so long in the open boat enjoyed the needed rest 
and slept soundly. A change in the wind necessitated the altering of the 
ship's course and compelling them to return toward Freemantle before 
getting out to sea ; at five next morning they were steering northwest 
under a light breeze and were off of Rottennest Island. 

About half past five o'clock the man on the lookout reported a sail on 
the lee bow, and the seamen soon pronounced her to be the Georgette. 
As daylight advanced the hostile ship could be seen standing right across 
their course under pressure of steam and canvas and nearing the Catalpa 
fast. 

About six o'clock the ship sailed past the steamer, which lay to. 
The Georgette was flying the British man-of-war white flag, with red St. 
George's cross, and union jack in corner. She also flew a vice-admiral's 
pennant at the masthead. The Catalpa flew out the Stars and Stripes to 
the breeze as they passed the Georgette, which steamed up again and 
followed in their wake, still keeping to windward. The breeze freshened 
and the Catalpa began to show her heels to the steamer, but the Georg- 
ette's people were determined not to let them slip. They fired up, and 
made all sail in pursuit ; the breeze began dying away fast and the Georgette 
was rapidly overtaking the Catalpa. Captain Anthony and those on 
board the whaler noticed as the Georgette neared them that she was full of 
armed men. About- eight o'clock they could see she had guns on board, 
and an artillery force. The water police were also on board and all the 
men the Governor could muster were placed in the steamer. The whale- 
boat belonging to the water police hung at the davits ; it was their evi- 
dent intention to board the Catalpa, and they seemed quite eager to 
capture her. 

In the cabin, standing armed with rifles and revolvers, were Messrs. 
Desmond, King, and Brennan, and the six soldiers. Mr. Breslin went 
below to explain the condition of affairs. He told them that if the 
Georgette officials were determined to fight for their recapture they would 
most probably succeed, as they had the advantage in every way ; they 
had more men, were better armed, had cannon and a steamer with which 
they could sail round them. While those of the rescuing party might only 
suffer imprisonment, the escaped military would be hanged if any lives 
were lost by resistance. It was simply a case of dying now or waiting to 
die in prison ; they had the option of fighting or surrendering if the 
Georgette fired into or boarded them. Their answer was, " We'll do 
whatever you say." Breslin replied, " I'll hold out to the last," as he 
again went on deck. 

The Georgette was now very close on the weather side, with a company 
of artillery on board, a field piece pointed at the ship, and the gunners at 
their quarters. A little later and the Georgette steamed ahead and fired 
a round shot across the bows of the Catalpa. Captain Anthony advised 
with Breslin, who replied : " Hold on your cruise ; take no notice of the 
shot yet." After the lapse of about three minutes the cannon was sponged 
out and again reloaded, both vessels sailing along side by side. Breslin 
said to Captain Anthony, " Now ask him what he wants." 

Captain Anthony stepped on the weather rail and raised his speaking 



192 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

trumpet. As he did so the Georgette hailed, " Bark ahoy ! " The answer 
went back, " What do you want?" "Heave to," came back from the 
Georgette. "What for?" said Captain Anthony. No reply, but the 
question repeated still louder. 

During this colloquy the men below were satisfied there was to be a 
fight ; every man grasped his loaded rifle ready for the signal to shoot. 
Mr. Desmond, telling this stirring incident to the writer, said that he felt 
for the moment reckless of life, and seemed only too glad of a brush with 
the enemy. 

All this time the quay at Freemantle was crowded with sightseers ; 
every kind of glass was brought to bear on the Georgette and Catalpa. 
Besides Walsh and McCarthy, there were several Irishmen in the crowd, 
and when the Georgette fired the shot across the bows of the Catalpa, the 
old love of fighting the British filled their hearts ; but of course they had 
to bridle their feelings in suppressed rage. The people were all in sym- 
pathy with the Catalpa, and the crowd wished the rescued men would get 
safely away. 

" What will I heave to for ? " said Captain Anthony, through his 
trumpet. After quite a pause the Georgette hailed, " Have you any con- 
vict prisoners on board ? " " No prisoners here ; no prisoners that I know 
of." The Georgette then hailed, " I telegraphed to your government ; don't 
you know you are amenable to British law in this colony ? You have six 
convict prisoners on board, I see some of them on deck now." This was 
not true ; all the men were below, and no persons were visible to the 
Britisher except the captain and crew and Mr. Breslin, who was standing 
alongside the captain. Mr. Breslin said to Captain Anthony, "This 
fellow is lying and trying to bluff us ; he can't send a message to Adelaide 
before Saturday next." The Georgette then hailed, " I'll give you fifteen 
minutes to consider or you must take the consequences. I have means 
to do it, and if you don't heave to I'll blow the mast out of you." " Tell 
him that's the American flag, and you are on the high seas," said Breslin. 
Captain Anthony then shouted, standing on the weather rail and pointing 
to his flag : " That's the American flag ; I am on the high seas ; my flag 
protects me ; if you fire on this ship you fire on the American flag." 

The threat to fire on the flag incensed the first mate, Mr. Smith. He 
cursed the Britisher in good strong American phrase. He exclaimed : 
" Damn him ! let him sink us ; we'll go down with the ship. . I'll never start 
sheet or tack for him." " Mr. Breslin," said Smith, "what'llyou do if the 
fellow boards us ? " " Sink his boat if it comes alongside ; you have a cou- 
ple of good heavy grindstones ; let us have them handy to heave over the 
side," was the reply. 

Captain Anthony reminded Mr. Smith of some short heavy logs of tim- 
ber which were in the hold, and bade him order the crew to pass them on 
deck ; the logs were quickly brought up and laid on the main hatch ready 
for use. The lookout reported a sail on the lee bow, and they saw a small 
sail between them and Rottennest Island. This called the captain's par- 
ticular attention to the position of the ship, and he began to think they 
were coming too close to the land, and liable to run into British waters ; he 
wore ship and stood on the other tack, bearing down close on the Georgette, 
which backed out of their way. This movement seemed to disconcert 
those on board the Georgette. The fact was they feared the whaler was 
more heavily armed than she appeared, and concluding that the Ameri- 
cans came prepared to fight, their British courage began to ooze through 
their finger ends. They imagined, when the Catalpa tacked, she was 
going to board them, and so the Britisher thought discretion the better 
part of valor. The fifteen minutes' grace had expired and several addi- 
tional minutes, and as the Georgette steamed slowly across the Catalpa 's 



HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA " RESCUE. 193 

stern, those on board the latter looked for raking shots among their masts. 
The Georgette did not fire, but ranged alongside again. The Irish-Ameri- 
cans knew the game of bluff was played out. The Georgette people had 
a battery of glasses leveled on the Catalpa, as Colonel Harvest, who was 
in command called out: "Won't you surrender to our government?" 
No reply. Again he called out, " I see three of those men on board now." 
Captain Anthony replied : " You are mistaken, sir ; the men you see are 
my ship's crew." The soldiers were all in the cabin, including Mr. Des- 
mond, Mr. Brennan, and Mr. King ; they had strict orders not to come 
on deck until a fight commenced. After about ten minutes' more sailing 
side by side the Georgette hailed : " Can I come on board ? " To this 
Captain Anthony replied : " No, sir ; I am bound for sea and can't stop." 
The Georgette still steamed alongside the Catalpa j as if unwilling to part 
company, but about 10 a. m. she slowly swung around and without even a 
bon voyage steamed back to Freemantle. 

The crowd on the Freemantle jetty were in great joy when the dis- 
comfited expedition returned, rather crestfallen after their pursuit. 

The Herald of Freemantle of April 27, 1876, thus describes the final 
return of the Georgette : 

"The early return of the steamer gave rise to every kind of conjec- 
ture, and as her approach was watched from the shore, wagers were freely 
made as to the cause of her return. Many declared that the Catalpa, 
warned of the steps the Government was taking by the previous visit of 
the Georgette, had attacked her and beaten her off. Other bets that, over- 
awed by the determination of the authorities and the demonstrations of 
force on board the Georgette, the captain of the Catalpa had quickly sur- 
rendered the runaways. As is usual in such cases, the sequel showed that 
neither was right. When the true conditions of affairs became known, 
there were some manifestations of indignation at the colony having being 
fooled by a Yankee skipper. The pensioners and police felt they had 
been taking part in a very silly farce, and had been laughed at by the 
Yankees at sea and the public on shore, and sincerely hoped that instruc- 
tions could be given to go out again and take the prisoners by force. 
The Governor, however, who had acted with most commendable energy 
and prudence, was not to be led into committing a breach of international 
law to gratify a feeling of resentment at the cool effrontery of the 
Yankee, directed that the armed parties on board the Georgette should be 
dismissed and the vessel returned to the agent, with his Excellency's 
thanks for the readiness with which the vessel had been placed at his dis- 
posal and for the hearty manner in which both the agent, Mr. McCleery, 
the Captain M. O'Grady, and all concerned, had co-operated with him in 
the matter. 

" These instructions were carried out and in a short time the crowds 
dispersed and the town lapsed into its normal condition of quietude, hav- 
ing suffered three days of the most intense excitement ever experienced 
in history." 

The Freemantle Herald of the following Saturday had an editorial on 
the rescue of these prisoners, with which we will close this part of the 
history : 

" Because six prisoners have been able under extraordinary circum- 
stances to escape from the Establishment and the colony, it must not be 
inferred that their escape is due to any improper laxity in the prison sys- 
tem, or of those in charge of the prisoners. On the contrary, nothing 
could show the difficulty of a prisoner in this colony effecting more than 



194 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

a mere temporary escape from custody than the history of the recent res- 
cue. The six men who have got away have not got away by their own 
unassisted efforts or by the connivance of the prison authorities — they 
have been rescued, and the means taken to effect their rescue show more 
than anything else could have done, short of their immediate recapture, 
how extremely difficult it is for a prisoner to be got clear away. The 
rescue of these men has not been effected without a regular expedition, 
organized at very considerable expense — certainly not less than two or 
three thousand pounds — and carried out with consummate judgment and 
untiring patience. It has been planned and organized by the Fenian 
Centre in the United States, and four men have been sent over here and 
been making dispositions for getting the prisoners out of captivity for 
some months. The leader has been here as far back as November, 
and a ship has been engaged to stay on the coast and to carry away res- 
cuers and prisoners when once on board at all risks. The means taken 
to get the men first out of the custody of the warders and thus out of the 
colony have been extraordinary. 

" Even so, it is not easy to see how the affair was successfully accom- 
plished. How, in the first place, were the rescuers to communicate with 
the prisoners? How could they so much as ascertain which were the 
men they wanted ? They had, doubtless, a list of their names, but this 
would not enable them to distinguish the six men of whom they were in 
search from the three hundred other prisoners among whom these six 
were distributed. They could make no inquiries — of whom could they 
inquire ? they could trust no one, not even if they heard that any par- 
ticular warder was favorable. Still less could they trust a prisoner — 
who could have obtained his liberty by betraying them. Supposing some 
of the four conspirators knew any of the six men personally, or that they 
possessed photographs of all of them, still there would be the difficulty of 
getting into communication with them without being seen. Writing was 
out of the question. A single line might have been fatal to the whole 
plot. One or other of the six must be spoken with, and it must be when 
no one else was near. If Collins or his associates had been seen speak- 
ing with a prisoner — above all a Fenian prisoner — the affair would have 
been blown at once. It was as much as the relieving party could do to 
escape suspicion even with all their care. Several people, even as it was, 
wondered what they could be wanting — two of them especially, and 
Collins, who was the leader and who evidently held a superior position in 
life, only averted suspicion by great tact. People asked naturally, What 
was he doing here ? A stranger who is at once obliged to be idle 
and to be much in public, keeping his ears and eyes open, and who gives 
no account of himself or his object in stopping at a place like Free- 
mantle, further than that he is making inquiries about colonial industries, 
inevitably excites curiosity and has to meet troublesome questions. But 
how, even after arresting suspicion so far as not to attract the notice 
of the police, he was able to discover and communicate with the six 
prisoners, is a mystery. 

" Anyone who will ask himself how he could do this without its being 
known either to other prisoners or the warders or some passer by, will 
see what obstacles lie in the way. 

"It appears that it took a very astute man who had nothing else to do 
and was aided by three associates several months to do it. There are, 
no doubt, people who are ready to say that it ought to have been impos- 
sible for the men to escape ; but there is not a public works prison in 
England from which half-a-dozen prisoners could not have been got 
away at very much less trouble and expense than it was found necessary 
to incur to get these six men from Swan River. Patience, judgment. 



HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA " RESCUE. 195 

and money will accomplish almost anything, but it has required a 
very large amount of all three to rescue these six Fenians, and even after 
a ll — after arrangements had been made with the men in custody, after 
provision had been made for getting them to Rockingham with as little 
observation as possible, after the sea channel had been surveyed and a 
ship engaged to wait and take them off, and every contingency had been 
provided for — they only reached the Rockingham landing-place ten 
minutes before the police, and only escaped being re-captured at sea 
before the boat joined the ship by His Excellency overlooking an 
unlikely contingency, and ordering the steamer to be back by noon 
to take the mails. In the end, they were only carried off under cover of 
the American flag. Nothing, in our mind, proves the sufficiency of the 
arrangement for preventing the escape of prisoners under ordinary cir- 
cumstances more than the history of this adventure. 

" Of course it would be possible to keep the prisoners who are on 
public works under a more strict surveillance than that to which they are 
accustomed, but it does not follow that such surveillance would tend to 
prevent what is really to be guarded against — namely, attempts to escape 
— or that it would be generally desirable. 

" In judging of a prison system, we must look at it as a whole, and at 
its usefulness for other purposes than the prevention of men being run 
off with by an expeditionary force of Fenians. Such an affair as that 
which has occurred is what has never happened before and is never likely 
to happen again. What the prison authorities therefore have to consider 
is, not how they may protect themselves against the Fenians, but what is 
most likely to keep the men resigned, orderly, and industrious. 

" The ultimate escape of prisoners is not a thing to be apprehended. 
The whole colony is a prison, and the nearest country is fifteen hundred 
miles off and offers no asylum to fugitives. 

" On the contrary, it constitutes an outer barrier against their escape 
which is jealously watched. Men are no nearer their liberty when they 
have got a few miles outside the walls of the Establishment than when 
they are inside them. They cannot get out of the country, and they 
cannot live in the bush, and must inevitably fall into the hands of the 
police. It is only under great irritation the men ever do anything so 
foolish as to break prison. 

" There have been fewer attempts to escape during the last few years 
than at any time in the history of the Establishment since the early days 
of Colonel Henderson." 

This editorial clearly points out the difficulties the Irish Nationalists 
had in sucessfully carrying out their mission, and which could not have 
been accomplished but for the fact of them having a whaler of their own, 
which they were able to control thoroughly. The chapter of accidents 
might have made the home expedition equally successful, but it could 
only occur by a lucky and fortunate sequence of events, which men cannot 
control. At the period of the rescue few whalers called into Bunbury ; 
during the whole stay of Mr. Breslin and Mr. Desmond in Western 
Australia from November, 1875, t0 April, 1876, but one ship, the Canton, 
put in there ; the colony had ceased to be a place of call for whalers for 
many years. True, that a short time after the departure of the Catalpa, 
and while Mr. Walsh and Mr. McCarthy were still on the scene, another 
American ship put in for wood and water. But the chances of getting 
these whaling captains friendly disposed as they should be to take 
upon themselves the risk of aiding even for money in the escape of 



196 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

prisoners, was a problematical speculation, and could only depend on 
chance. It is very evident that the letter sent to the north of England 
from the prison must have misled the men at home, and like many 
attempts or plans arranged by Irish Revolutionists, they did not suffi- 
ciently take into consideration the difficulties to be surmounted, but left 
the sequel to the judgment of their men and chance. It has been most 
men's experience for many years in Irish business that no undertaking 
has ever been brought to a successful completion without some well 
thought out plan, and brains to guide and conduct it to a final conclu- 
sion. Even then, as Burns expresses it, " The best laid schemes o* mice 
and men gang aft aglee." Some blunder, neglect, or over zeal on the 
part of one of the men upsets and disarranges the plan by which a leader 
has arranged a certain course. The movement of a watch is not more 
delicate in its machinery than are revolutionary enterprises in the face 
of a skillful and powerful enemy, but like the correctness with which 
these small mechanisms record the time, just as absolutely certain of 
success can the revolutionary leader be who has the requisite qualities — 
bravery, brains, and staying powers. Courage first, for the man who is 
not prepared to coolly take his chance for life or death, or else the living 
death of imprisonment, should never try to serve his country in any 
active manner; it is necessary not only to enforce discipline in the men 
under his command, but to show them a good example. Men should 
always feel that their leader faces the same death that they are prepared 
to meet. His presence inspires a confidence which may be far beyond 
his deserts, but that confidence is an additional nerve to strengthen his 
men and make the undertaking have greater chances of success. 

The two men who journeyed from Britain to Australia to free their 
soldier friends deserve the grateful thanks of their patriotic fellow- 
countrymen. They never calculated chances of imprisonment, or even 
cared for them, — as brave men never do, — and it is the knowledge that 
Ireland has thousands of such patriots which makes men hope on and 
still induces them to toil on, until the acme of the struggle is crowned 
with success — Ireland a free and independent nation. Both John Walsh 
and Dennis Florence McCarthy were true and tried men in a crowd of 
true and tried men at home from whom they were selected, but with all 
their true manhood and devotion to the cause, thinking men fail to see 
how they could be successful with the materials under their control. 
True, the chapter of accidents might have aided them, but this is a frail 
anduncertain factor in revolutionary enterprises. 

To the American expedition must not only be awarded the palm of 
success, but the perfection of judgment that made every proper prepara- 
tion. The men selected, like their Irish comrades, were all true men, all 
loyal to Ireland's cause. To John J. Breslin, the leader of the expedition, 
the meed of praise must be given for the admirable manner in which 
he carried out every detail, and also for the patience and great tact he 
displayed in avoiding suspicion during such a prolonged residence as he 
was compelled to undergo in Western Australia ; to all of these men, 
both the Irish-Americans and the men at home, Ireland is indebted for 
this proof of courage, determination, and devotion which they displayed 
in her cause, and their names will be written in her history among that 
roll of patriots who, despite the sneers, scoffs, and slanders of a relentless 
enemy, have never swerved in their devotion to motherland. In Captain 
Anthony and the mate, Mr. Smith, Ireland witnessed the manly valor 
which upholds the Stars and Stripes in every sea. 

But with no intention of taking one bay from the laurels and just 
honors paid those gallant men, let Irish Nationalists reflect and consider 
what effect this line of policy can have upon the enemy, and what results 



HISTORY OF THE " CATALPA " RESCUE. 197 

can be expected to follow in favor of Ireland. Its advantages were 
prestige and to show Irishmen that a living organization existed to aid 
the old cause. But if Ireland's object is only the release of men who are 
captured by the foe, then why attempt to struggle at all, and there 
could be no need for rescue. It has often been thought by many who 
read and heard of this gallant Western Australian incident, what real 
service to Ireland those brave men, who formed and organized that 
expedition, could do if hurled upon the enemy. It is not meant any 
particular line of attack, where Britain's superior forces could be concen- 
trated to resist and capture, but rather the swift and deadly blow of the 
guerrilla, who delivers his assault and disappears, only to reappear and 
deal as deadly a blow. There is no motto to free nations but Work I 
work ! work ! Ireland cannot be freed by the silly policy of Talk ! talk ! 
talk ! and this work resolves itself into the only road to liberty : Strike ! 
strike! strike! Never mind the losses undergone ; the enemy is destroy- 
ing ten times a larger number of the Irish people by the present hellish 
and demoniac policy. But be sure no men are captured until after they 
strike ! and strike with effect. The lesson of this Catalpa rescue is that 
Ireland has plenty of such men at her disposal. Has she likewise her 
men of courage and brain power in the councils of the Nation ? 



CHAPTER XIII. 

(1877-78.) 

OBSTRUCTION — IRISH INDORSEMENT. 

Obstruction Scenes in the British Parliament, 1877 — Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar — Prisons 
Bill, March, 1877 — Mutiny Bill — Mr. Parnell and Mr. Butt— South Africa Bill- 
Great Obstruction Scene — House Sitting Twenty-six Hours — Scenes During Night 
and Early Morning — Enthusiastic Approval of the Irish People — Reception of Mr. 
Parnell in Kilmallock — Banquet to Mr. Parnell — Letter from Mr. Biggar — Trium- 
phal Progress of Mr. Parnell to Navan — Address of the Town Commissioners — 
Mr. Parnell's Speech on Obstruction — Mr. Gladstone Visits Ireland — Presented with 
the Freedom of Dublin City — Great Speech in the City Hall — Irish Emigration — 
Ireland and Belgium — Mr. Gladstone Tries to Get the Views of the People — Libel 
Suit, Bridge versus Casey — The " Galtee Boy " Exposes Patton Bridge — John Bright's 
Friend Buckley — The Mountain Peasants — The "Galtee Boy" Wins the Suit — John 
Bright and Marcus Good body of Clara — The Irish Farmer's Lease — Liberation of 
Messrs. Davitt, O'Brien, and Color Sergeant McCarthy — Reception at Kingstown — 
Public Demonstration in Dublin — Causes which Led up to Davitt's Arrest — Death 
of Sergeant McCarthy — Britain's Penal Dungeons. 

When Charles Stuart Parnell first appeared upon the political horizon, 
r there was an intense hostility among the masses of the people against the 
doctrines of Provincialism or, as it is often termed, Parliamentary agita- 
tion. What, then, were the reasons which afterward induced so many to 
look with favor on the new aspirant for public leadership ? It was the 
introduction of the new weapon, obstruction, and Mr. Parnell's energetic 
tactics in the enemy's legislative chambers. This, coupled with a bold 
and manly outspoken determination to win self-government for Ireland 
in any case, or by any means should peaceful measures fail, which won for 
Mr. Parnell the devotion of so many Nationalists. Had Mr. Parnell 
v then attempted the dryrot policy of doing nothing which he preaches and 
^practices at this date (1887), or had he attempted to form an alliance 
with any of the wings of the enemy's political parties, his -sun of leadership 
-would have never arisen. The energy at that time displayed by the young 
leader, the novelty and unknown power of his new weapon, by the use of 
which so much was promised to the Irish people, and also the open and 
avowed hostility of the professional Home Rule Provincialists under the 
leadership of Mr. Isaac Butt, all thes^ attracted the attention of the 
masses to the member for Meath. Since that time Mr. Parnell stole 
Mr. Butt's Home Rule thunder only to find it as powerful as the whirr 
from a popgun. 

When the young member from Meath and his small band of col- 
leagues, led by Mr. Biggar, interfered with the orderly and solemn course 
of British legislation, hampering and trying to render useless the Parlia- 
mentary machine, he awoke a feeling of joy and delight in the Irish 
breast which parliamentary tactics never before evoked. It was a species 
of physical force introduced into the British Commons, an upsetting of 
all the traditions and customs of that chamber, hallowed to British 
reverence. 

The action of Mr. Parnell and his colleagues annoyed and irritated 
the British statesmen and people, and was angrily commented on by 
the united British press. 

This new weapon could not be termed by any stretch of imagination, 

198 



OBSTRUCTION— IRISH INDORSEMENT. 199 

" moral suasion." It was an attack on an ancient English institution 
which rendered inoperative the law-making power and crippled legisla- 
tion. It won over to the banner of Mr. Parnell Irish believers in physical 
force ; it strengthened and made more confident Irishmen who clung to 
milder methods. The more indignant the British became, the more 
gratified and satisfied were the Irish people. 

The masses of all peoples are not difficult to sway, when leaders can 
show them a course by which their needs and desires can be procured ; 
it is then only natural that the path which entails the less sacrifice and 
suffering, if it can be fruitful with the necessary results, will be eagerly 
embraced. 

Provincialism, miscalled Nationalism, took a forward step in the Irish 
mind ; it was impossible for any but close observers, and men with time 
to give to the subject study, to see that Buttism and Parnellism could 
only have one and the same result. How could the masses see this, 
when men who posed as leaders in the ranks of the Nationalists could not 
discern that this new departure was Provincialism, Mokanna-like, wear- 
ing a national veil ? 

Parliamentary politics — through the action of the young member for 
Meath and a few enthusiastic and determined men, who had outstripped 
their fellow representatives in trying to compel Britain to listen to 
Ireland's story and hearken to her needs by the bold course of " obstruc- 
tion " — had been invested with a fresh glamour for the Irish people ; 
they eagerly listened and accepted the statement made to them, that 
Britain must either grant " Home Rule " to Ireland or have the whole 
course of her legislation blocked. 

Ireland — 'twas told the people — had at last discovered a weapon by 
the aid of which they could wring from Britain a native Parliament and 
an independent Ministry. 

Mr. Butt, the Provincialist leader, was indignant and annoyed at Mr. 
Parnell and Mr. Biggar's course. He was a true believer in the efficacy 
of persuasion and conciliation, and as loyal to the British Crown as his 
great predecessor, Daniel O'Connell, or as Mr. Parnell is to-day (1887). 
He knew the course pursued by the members for Meath and Cavan would 
anger his British friends, and, as he expressed it, undo all his labor in 
trying to conciliate British prejudices against concessions (so termed) to 
Ireland. 

Mr. Butt did not then realize that the tide of popularity had turned, 
and was flowing steadily in the direction of his youthful competitor and 
eventual successor in the chameleon-like position of Provincial leader. 

Notwithstanding Mr. Butt's great ability as an orator and as a Parlia- 
mentarian, he could not show to the Irish people that which they believed 
Mr. Parnell had already accomplished : the discomforture of their foes 
by the member for Meath's perseverance in "obstruction." 

How many times has Ireland since been told by its new idol and 
his follower — men who are matchless in Parliamentary abilities — that 
their enemies would soon be routed, and that success would soon reward 
their labors. But alas ! the end is not yet ; neither is the goal in sight. 

The slight parliamentary skirmishes of the previous session, tending 
toward "obstruction," were followed up during this year, 1877, by the 
first real battles of the new movement. Mr. Butt introduced his Land 
Bill in March, which was again defeated by a large majority, Britain's 
usual answer to conciliation. 

During the debate on the Prisons Bill in March, 1877, Mr. Parnell 
tried to expose the tortures and cruelties practiced on Irish political 
prisoners in English penal prisons. He called attention to the treatment 
of Reddin, who lost the use of his limbs through the brutal punishment 



200 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

lie received, even the prison doctor aiding in the cruel persecution. 
During the course of his statement he was interrupted several times by 
the British members, on some occasions very rudely and in an unparlia- 
mentary manner. 

The Irish members who supported Mr. Parnell opposed every motion 
to progress, and the House was kept sitting until near morning. Mr. 
Butt hoped the honorable member for Meath would not persist in his 
opposition to progress. Mr. Parnell said in deference to the honorable 
member for Limerick he would withdraw his opposition, and the tired 
House passed this measure and closed the sitting. 

Again the Mutiny Bill was in committee on April 12. Mr. Parnell 
and the small band who followed him were persistent in their attempts to 
improve and alter some of the clauses of the bill. Division after division 
took place, but Mr. Parnell and his determined followers kept the House 
on the defensive. The apostles and soldiers of the new departure were 
determined to test the power of their new weapon. 

Mr. Butt was very much annoyed at this persistent opposition." He 
thought that the honorable member ought to have waited till he came 
to a clause which he wished to amend. He regretted that the time of 
the House should have been wasted on this miserable and wretched dis- 
cussion, and condemned the course taken by the honorable member as 
one of obstruction. He had no control over the honorable member, but 
he had a duty to discharge to the Irish nation, and in discharge of that 
•duty he wished to say that he entirely disapproved of the honorable 
member's conduct. 

On April 24, 1877, the annual Home Rule debate took place with the 
usual Irish speeches in favor of the measure and a few British speeches in 
opposition. The only incident worthy of note in this debate was Mr. 
Gladstone's indignant denial of having written a note in support of a 
Liberal candidate who promised to vote in favor of the Irish demand. 
The motion for inquiry into the causes which necessitated Ireland to 
demand a separate Legislature and Ministry was rejected by an over- 
whelming majority. 

The South African Bill, to sanction the confederation of the British 
possessions on the dark continent, came before the House on July 25. 
The Transvaal Republic had been invaded and violently seized by the 
British, for which act Mr. Gladstone denounced the Tory Administration. 
He condemned their arrogant usurpation of the Boers' Government. 
These speeches of the great Liberal found an echo in every liberty- 
loving heart. 

Mr. Parnell opposed the Confederation Bill then before the House, 
principally on account of the Boers' right as freemen. Mr. Parnell was 
violently attacked by his British opponents. The member for Meath in 
the course of his remarks said : " I express my opinion that intimida- 
tion has been used by the English press. I express my deliberate opin- 
ion that deliberate intimidation has been resorted to by the press of this 
country in order to coerce me and prevent me from discharging my duty. 
As long as I have a seat in this House, I shall not allow myself to be 
prevented from speaking what I think it necessary to speak, or from 
taking such steps as I think it necessary to take." 

The first great battle of obstruction took place a few days later when 
the South African Bill was in committee ; the sitting of the House of 
Commons lasted for the unprecedented time of 26^ hours, beginning on 
Tuesday, July 31, at 4.15 p. m. and sitting unceasingly until Wednesday 
■evening at 6.10 p. m. Hour after hour the British members were com- 
pelled to march through the division lobby on repeated motions to adjourn. 
The Government was determined to overcome the Irish opposition by 



OBSTRUCTION— IRISH INDORSEMENT. 201 

mere force of numbers. The weary hours of the night stole away, 
each succeeding peal of the great clock of St. Stephens was answered 
by the tread of feet through the lobby as division succeeded division with 
the selfsame result, but still to find the unflagging Irish few in numbers 
but determined as at the start. The gray light of morning stole into the 
Commons Chamber to witness a scene never before known in British 
Parliamentary annals. 

The few members who assisted Mr. Parnell in his untiring opposition 
to the Tory Government were compelled to divide themselves into relief 
parties, so that some would be enabled to get rest while others sustained 
the struggle. Mr. Biggar, with his quiet, keen sarcasm and dry humor 
tried to inspirit his friends and abash his foes; he gave Mr. Parnell 
valuable assistance, as did Mr. O'Connor Power, once a Nationalist, now, 
alas ! lost to the cause he at one time so faithfully served. The Irish con- 
tingent dwindled down to three votes in the early morning, and on one 
occasion to two votes, excluding their tellers, but they refused to succumb 
and kept on the struggle as stubbornly as ever. The sun rose higher 
and higher in the heavens, but no change came in the aspect of affairs 
in Parliament ; the unyielding Irish would die on the floor of the House 
before they would surrender. 

For the first time since the so-called union, the British Government 
began to realize that a new order of men represented Irish interests in 
that house. With Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar came a new programme, 
and activity and determination was soon to permeate the Irish "ranks. 
But only to further prove and emphasize National teaching in all ages, 
that no amount of energy or activity can possibly solve or even help in the 
smallest manner the Irish issue in the enemy's Parliament. Ireland must 
either die or fight, as all nations were compelled to do for liberty and 
independence. 

Mr. Butt, who was a sincere Provincialist and as West British as Mr. 
Parnell and his followers are to-day — such is the end of all Irish Parlia- 
mentary careers — was horrified, as were his friends Mr. Mitchell Henry, 
Mr. Shaw, and the other so-called Home Rule members, when they 
entered the House that morning and witnessed the scene therein pre- 
sented. The House still sitting, or it would be more appropriate to say 
marching, as when they left it late the night before. The Buttites were 
as indignant with the Parnellites as these latter worthy gentlemen are 
to-day with the London Times for accusing them of association with the 
Invincibles. Mr. Butt was very indignant and felt disgraced and humili- 
ated at the ungentlemanly behavior of the Parnellites, but he knew he 
was powerless to suppress what he considered the outrageous conduct of 
the members for Meath and Cavan and their friends. The Buttites felt 
too alarmed to admit to themselves what they feared : that the Irish 
nation was ready to sustain Mr. Parnell in his "obstructive" opposition 
to British legislation. They knew, alas ! too well for their own political 
happiness, that Mr. Parnell could give no opposition to the British extreme 
enough, which would not meet the full sanction and approval of the Irish 
people. 

The Government was compelled to succumb, baffled and discomfited, 
notwithstanding their immense majority, for the Tories never dreamed of 
laying their hands on the sacred privileges of Parliament. It was left to 
the hypocritical and canting British party that style themselves Liberals 
to suppress debate and bring in a Closure Bill at St. Stephens. The 
wearied chamber rose after an arduous and prolonged sitting. 

Great was the joy of the Irish people when the news reached them. 
It was the first parliamentary struggle that had given them any confidence. 
They began to hope, inspirited by the delusive teaching of the time, that 



202 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

they had found means by which they could compel the British to sur- 
render to them the management of their own island home. It seemed 
to them that they had something more tangible within their grasp than 
a vote on Home Rule. They were taught that they held the power to 
destroy the privileges of the British Commons so long as Britain refused 
to yield to their just demands, and that as the Tories succumbed in the 
House so would the enemy crumble before these new " obstructive " 
tactics. 

They believed a new leader had sprung into life to lead his suffering 
countrymen away from British bondage. Mr. Butt's eloquent oratory 
was not listened to in the enemy's Parliament, or heard only to be 
outvoted ; here was a new policy with a vigorous young leader, and 
Ireland was ready to enroll herself under his banner. 

Carried away by the wave of enthusiasm which followed this Parlia- 
mentary struggle, the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain at their 
Liverpool conference, and as an indorsement of his policy, elected Mr. 
Parnell as their president to replace Mr. Isaac Butt. 

Killmallock, County Limerick, through her member, Mr. W. H. 
O'Sullivan, tendered Mr. Parnell a public reception and banquet as an 
acknowledgment of his Parliamentary victory. The weather had been 
very broken for some time past, and a great deal of rain had fallen, but this 
Monday, September 17, 1877, dawned in mellow loveliness — a sweet Irish 
autumn day. The sun shone out in beauty and brilliancy on the green 
fields a*nd softened vales of Limerick. Erin had wiped away her tears 
and wore her sunniest smile of welcome to greet her young champion. 
Numerous bands made the air resound with Irish music, arches covered 
the roadway and banners were displayed in profusion, and everything that 
was possible was done to give Mr. Parnell a hearty Irish welcome. 
Patriotic mottoes were inscribed on flags and banners ; the usual Irish 
" Cead Mille Failthe " was visible, accompanied by " Welcome to our good 
Members," "Ireland demands Home Rule," "Free the Captives." The 
enthusiastic and impulsive people believed in the efficacy of " obstruction '* 
to win them victory. 

Mr. Parnell's arrival at Killmallock was the occasion of a most enthu- 
siastic reception. Speeches were delivered by several who came to do 
him welcome, including Mr. O'Sullivan, the resident M. P. Mr. Parnell 
delivered the following interesting address. The opening part in italics 
is appropriate to that gallant gentleman's position at this date (1887) : 

" Irishmen in their own country had always been the first to show 
they were Irishmen, but in the House of Commons they never could be Irish- 
men. I appreciate the sacrifice you have made in coming to welcome 
myself and others, and I appreciate the spirit which dictated the sacrifice. 

" Standing as we are in the midst of monuments that mark the ancient 
struggle between Ireland and the Normans, we are inaugurating a fresh 
struggle between England and Ireland which we will fight out like men, 
It is our duty not to conciliate, not to beg, not to crave from England. It 
is our duty to demand, and if we cannot get what we ask by demanding 
it, our duty is to show that England must give it. (Cheers.) In what- 
ever field we struggled, whatever weapons we employed, let us show we are 
Irishmen. (Cheers.) I have been accused of being a disunionist and a 
disruptionist. I am neither. I seek no personal aims in this matter, but 
I do say to the people of Ireland that their cause has been degraded by their 
representatives in the House of Commons. I wish to bring about a change 
and to ask you to see that so long as we are to have a Parliamentary 
policy of any kind it should be a national policy. There was no dis- 
union on this question. The people of Ireland were of one mind upon 
it ; or if they were not so to-day they would soon be of one mind." 



OBSTRUCTION— IRISH INDORSEMENT. 203 

That portion of this truly remarkable address which is italicized 
should be remembered to-day. Every word of Mr. Parnell's speech in 
Kilmallock delivered ten years ago would bear repetition and teach a 
wholesome lesson to the people as to the mockery of Provincialist 
teaching. 

In the evening there was a banquet tendered to the " patriotic member 
for Meath." Letters of apology were read from Mr. Butt and other 
gentlemen who regretted being absent. Mr. Biggar, M. P. for Cavan, 
wrote : 

" I regret very much it is out of my power to be at Kilmallock on 
this day week. I see by the papers that Mr. Butt and Mr. Redmond 
have been trying to lead the people of Ireland astray by incorrect assump- 
tions and attempts to hide the leading question. Do the people of 
Ireland wish their representatives to be industrious or indolent? -Do 
they wish them to make their primary object what will be for the good of 
Ireland, or what will please the English members of Parliament ? I think 
whenever the issue is raised there can be no doubt of what the verdict of 
the Irish people will be in spite of the mutterings of a few insincere 
Whigs." 

At this banquet the toast of the British Queen was omitted, and the 
first toast was, " Ireland a self-governed nation." 

All over Ireland Mr. Parnell was welcomed, and in Britain, in Irish 
gatherings, they were eager and delighted to see and hear the apostle 
and leader of obstruction. 

But "royal" Meath did not forget her young member, and Mr. 
Parnell's appearance there was a triumphal progress. Bands and banners 
came to meet him as he stepped off the train at Navan. The Town Com- 
missioners of Navan presented him with an address of welcome which 
was read by their chairman. They observed with satisfaction that neither 
the fierce hostility of any intolerant alien assembly, nor the vile abuse of 
an unscrupulous press, nor the chilling abstention of his own Parlia- 
mentary colleagues could drive him from that course of action which his 
patriotism suggested as best calculated to serve the interests of his 
country. The chairman complimented him for his honesty and patriotism, 
his earnestness and ability, his indomitable perseverance as a faithful 
representative, and finally as "a great Irishman." 

Mr. Parnell said he thought the opposition to British rule which was 
best and most felt was that which brought about results, and that 
opposition was best which was determined and never flinching. The inde- 
pendent opposition of Gavan Duffy and Lucas had failed, because 
the British Government used means which it well knew how to use against 
it, and it was thwarted by treachery. The Government of the present 
day thought it would thwart this opposition by similar means, but they 
reckoned without their host. If the Irish people thought it was best to 
be craven and cowardly, he would submit to their judgment. If they 
chose to do nothing but kneel before England, let them kneel ; but when 
they found, as they should know well enough by this time, that they 
would not get anything out of England by cringing and kneeling and sup- 
plicating, they would adopt the policy of action, which had been shown in 
some slight degree to be a successful policy. 

Mr. Ennis, M. P., in the course of a long speech, said the truth was 
that when Irishmen went to Westminster they seemed to forget that they 
were Irishmen. 

The grateful Irish people lost no opportunity to testify their esteem 
and approval of Mr. Parnell's political course. Then commenced a 
series of public receptions to Ireland's favorite son that has since 
been continued by the people of both continents. 



204 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

A new champion in favor of Home Rule for Ireland appeared at this 
time — that erratic but brilliant and able Englishman Lord Randolph 
Churchill. The Irish papers quoted his speeches and writings with 
approval. The English press said the only logical conclusion that Lord 
Churchill should come to was to join the Home Rule League. Alas for 
Ireland, she will foolishly listen to these meaningless, mocking speeches 
of affected sympathy offered by British statesmen for their own personal 
or party purposes. Ireland is for them a shuttlecock, which both Liberals 
and Tories use to toss about between them. Ireland was visited this 
year by one of the greatest masters in the use of kindly speech and 
fierce condemnation of Ireland's persecutors when out of orifice, William 
Ewart Gladstone. 

Mr. Gladstone's eloquent voice, when not hampered by the cares and 
responsibilities of office, has been often raised in the cause of suffering- 
humanity, when Britain is not the despot. He traveled England to 
denounce the cruelties and abominations which the " unspeakable Turk" 
had practiced in Bulgaria. His denunciations thundered over Britain 
and re-echoed over civilization, just as years ago his condemnation of 
Neapolitan atrocities toward political prisoners drew the attention of 
Europe. His subsequent campaign in condemnation of the Tory 
usurpation in the Transvaal received approval from all who love free- 
dom. His eloquent and able advocacy of the Boer cause reached the 
people of the late Transvaal republic and they felt they had a noble 
champion in this great Englishman, and one who would peaceably undo 
the despotic acts of the Tories when he came to power. Ireland, or rather 
a portion of her inhabitants, welcomed this suave Briton. They forgot 
the coercionist in the advocate of freedom. Mr. Gladstone was then 
denouncing the Tory Premier and his policy on every platform. Of 
course he was then Ireland's friend, so the Provincialists taught them. 

The Tory Parliament of 1876 had conferred one great boon on 
Ireland. It was a measure of justice and a concession, according to the 
Irish leader, Mr. Butt. It was granting to the Irish municipal corpora- 
tions the privilege of bestowing the honor of the freedom of their several 
municipalities on any prominent Irishman or distinguished stranger. 
'Twas a mockery and an insult to the capital of an enslaved and decay- 
ing nation to go through the hollow and theatrical ceremony of confer- 
ring freedom — what it did not itself possess — upon any visitor or 
countryman. 

Mr. Gladstone was duly honored by the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and 
council of Dublin, and the freedom of the city was conferred upon the 
illustrious visitor on November 7, 1877. It was the occasion for several 
complimentary speeches and gave Mr. Gladstone an opportunity to speak 
at length on several interesting subjects. In the course of his speech he 
said : 

" My Lord, there is another measure which after all with the people 
of Ireland is greater than any of these others. I mean the measure which 
relates to the land question. This is an agricultural country. I for one 
should be delighted [?] to witness the growth of its trade and manufac- 
tures and of its mining interests, but the present is that which it is in our 
prime duty to deal with and to consider, and we must therefore ask our- 
selves what has been done or what can be done with respect to rendering 
secure and prosperous that which may be called now at the present day 
the staple occupation of the people of Ireland. . . 

" We have witnessed the partial depopulation of the country. For 
one, I may thank God that if we may rely upon calculations, I believe 
honestly made, though we do not yet know whether the population of 
Ireland is actually increasing, we may hope, and profoundly thankful am I 



OBSTRUCTION— IRISH INDORSEMENT. 205 

for one, if it be true, that that depopulation, that decrease, is at an end. 
No doubt in the times when Ireland had more than eight millions of people 
those who examined its condition, and many of its best and sincerest 
friends, were in the habit of holding, and they conscientiously believed, 
that large emigration, which means undoubtedly decrease in numbers, 
was the only mode of bringing about a state of things when there would be 
a tolerable sure sufficiency of the means of livelihood in Ireland, but it was 
not by a scheme of emigration due to the wisdom of statesmen, but it was 
by a severe dispensation of Providence — severe, but in its results do not 
let it be supposed that / murmur at its extent — it was by a severe calamity 
that this great change was partly brought about and partly set in motion, 
so that instead of more than eight millions you have now less than five 
and a half millions." 

How like the Pharisee in the Temple as described in Holy Writ is Mr. 
Gladstone when he thanks God that he for one is thankful that there is no 
further decrease in the Irish population. It reminds the Irish Nationalist 
of the lines of Tacitus : " None grieve so ostentatiously as those who 
rejoice most in heart." 

Was Mr. Gladstone well informed on his subject, or did he really care 
to make himself so? He, an ex-British Premier, and a Cabinet Minister 
during many years of this depopulation of Ireland, uses an expression 
which must be termed an impious blasphemy to call the cause of the fear- 
ful famine and emigration a dispensation of Providence. 

There was no famine in 1846-47, but an artificial famine. The failure 
of a single esculent, the potato — this could not be called famine in a land 
that produced enough corn and cattle in either of these years to feed 
more than twenty millions of people ; but this corn and cattle had to be 
shipped to England to feed their British foes, while the Irish people died 
like rotten sheep by the wayside. 

It was the dispensation of that hellish machine, foreign government, 
of which this most respectable statesman had been a valued member for 
a long term of his public life, and for five years as Premier he adminis- 
tered its affairs (1869 to 1874) — a government which deprived the Irish 
people of many occupations, and compelled them to live on the land, the 
fruits of which were in greater part confiscated by minions of that alien 
power of which Mr. Gladstone was part, these instruments of British 
rule, the landlords. 

Since that date, now ten years ago, Ireland has been further depopu- 
lated by half a million souls. Mr. Gladstone tells us that deplorable as 
this loss of population may be it is a benefit, the cant phrase usually 
used by British statesmen. 

The kingdom of Belgium, which is but one-third the area of Ireland, 
has a population of 5,853,278 souls, which is increasing yearly. If 
Ireland were like Belgium she could easily support in comfort and happi- 
ness 20,000,000 of people. She is not only three times larger than Bel- 
gium, but she possesses many natural advantages that Belgium has not. 
She is a magnificent island possessed of not only every natural beauty, 
but every natural advantage to become a great manufacturing and 
commercial nation — an island guarded by the sea, and not on the frontier 
of any powerful nation such as those which threaten Belgium's inde- 
pendence. 

Belgium, though small and apparently feeble compared with that 
great braggadocio of nations Britain, who having in her coffers the 
plunder of other countries thinks herself the more powerful in proportion 
to her wealth — Belgium, small Belgium, can put upon the European 
battleground a larger army than this bloated mistress of the seas, as 
she styles herself. Ireland will remain cursed with the knowledge that she 



206 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

is an agricultural country until she can manage her own affairs and 
develop her own industries as Belgium did since she became a self- 
governing nation. 

Mr. Gladstone's stay in Ireland was a pleasant one. He took the 
novel way of trying to get at the sentiments of the people by traveling 
portions of his journey in third-class carriages. Irishmen have been taught 
through coercion and tyranny, especially those of the humbler class, not to 
speak their real sentiments to strangers. Mr. Gladstone could not pos- 
sibly learn much in this way during his very limited stay. 

One of the many cruelties practiced on the Irish agricultural 
classes came before the public in a libel case which was tried at this 
time. 

An English merchant, a Mr. Buckley, a friend of that great English 
democrat John Bright, purchased an estate in Ireland. The agent 
on the estate was a certain Patton Bridge, who gained unenviable notoriety. 
This agent was a tyrant of the most despotic kind and one who looked 
upon the Irish peasant farmer as a degraded serf. A Southern slave 
owner had more mercy and feeling for his slaves than had this slave 
overseer of the Englishman Buckley for the Irish tenants. Buckley 
looked upon his purchase in the light of an ordinary commercial trans- 
action, which should repay him a certain percentage whether he had 
or had not bought it at its proper value. So he ordered Patton Bridge 
to perform the pleasing task of increasing the rents on the estate, whether 
the land could produce the additional impost or not. 

Among the tenancies were a number of small holdings. A bleak 
mountain side on the estate, which was stony and barren, was made 
capable of growing some potatoes in small patches here and there through 
the industry of the poverty-stricken peasants. As it came out in evidence 
on the trial for libel, the poor people carried up the mountain sides 
baskets of earth, and toiled on until they were successful in making the 
stony soil capable of producing some crops. 

Those who give currency or belief to one of England's slanders, that 
the people of Ireland are lazy, should visit this arid mountain and see 
what fruitful patches these poor people have won from the bleak hillside 
which at that time was covered with a series of small farms (as Irish 
farms go in size), by hard toil in all weathers from daybreak to dusk, 
proving the undeniable fact, that when Irishmen at home have an incen- 
tive for labor there are no more industrious people on the earth. 

Patton Bridge put high rents on these mountain patches, the creation 
of the toiling peasant. The English democrat's predecessor was a ruined 
Irish landlord, but he only charged a nominal rent for this stony hillside. 

Patton Bridge's life was attempted ; but while he escaped with a 
slight wound, an unfortunate youth in his service as car driver received 
the shots intended for the agent. Patton Bridge was protected by an 
armed guard of constabulary, who succeeded in arresting an aged farmer 
named Crowe, who was tried and executed. Some correspondence was 
printed in the newspapers on Patton Bridge's career. One of these com- 
munications was a scathing letter written by Mr. J. Casey of Mitchels- 
town, known by the nom de plume of the "Galtee Boy," an Irish 
Nationalist, one of the ex- Fenian prisoners. Mr. Casey exposed several 
of Patton Bridge's inhuman misdeeds. The result was a trial for libel. 
The case was heard in the Four Courts, Dublin, and such an expose of 
plunder and villainy came to light that even Judge Barry, one of the pre- 
siding judges, was compelled to condemn the system which made such 
infamies possible. Mr. Casey got a verdict, in his favor from the jury,, 
and on his return to Mitchelstown he received a great ovation from his 
fellow-townsmen. 



OBSTRUCTION— IRISH INDORSEMENT. 207 

John Bright, whose friend Mr. Buckley became the owner of this 
estate by recent purchase, grew very much irritated at the thought that 
Buckley could be considered as acting in any way tyrannical, and expressed 
himself strongly in the House of Commons on the subject. Among Mr. 
Bright's friends are the Goodbodys of Ireland. Marcus Goodbody of 
Clara, Kings County, is an extensive landowner. Some years anterior to 
this period, it is currently related in the neighborhood, Mr. Goodbody 
had notified his tenants that their rents were to be increased next gale 
day. A few days after this notice was sent out Mr. Goodbody in walking 
through his grounds one morning saw the initial letters of his name, M. 
G., on several of the surrounding trees. The letters were formed by 
bullets fired from a musket, evidently the shooting of some skillful marks- 
man. Mr. Goodbody was alarmed. He knew full well these letters had 
an ominous meaning for him, so he fled to the Continent and remained 
there for some time, instructing his farm bailiff not to interfere with the 
rents. On his return he was welcomed home by his tenants with the 
heartiest good will. Nothing was said on either side about the cause of 
Mr. Goodbody's absence. Some years after Mr. John Bright was on a 
visit to Mr. Goodbody's house in Clara. He complimented Mr. Goodbody 
on the superior appearance of his tenantry and the comfortable snug 
farmhouses, in such contrast to the surroundings. He said to his host 
that he supposed his tenants held leases — this was considered a panacea 
for land ills at that time. Mr. Goodbody replied in the negative, that he 
never gave any leases to his tenantry, neither did they ask him for such. 
The Englishman was surprised at the reply. 

Some days after this conversation Mr. Bright in the course of his 
rambles came in sight of an exceptionally pretty farmhouse, with roses 
and creepers ahout the porch. He was surprised to see what might be 
termed a vara avis in Ireland, and going up to the farmhouse was 
accosted by the farmer with the kindly Irish greeting, " God save you, 
sir." Mr. Bright was invited to enter, and seating himself in the best 
parlor told the farmer who he was. The farmer was delighted to see 
Mr. Bright, whose reputation as Ireland's friend was very great at that 
time. Mr. Bright complimented his host on the taste displayed about 
the farmhouse and concluded by remarking that he presumed he had a 
lease. " Oh, yes, sir," said the farmer ; " I am a lease-holder." " Who is 
your landlord ?" asked the English visitor. " Mr. Goodbody of Clara, 
God bless him, and a good landlord he is," replied the Irishman. " Mr. 
Goodbody ! " exclaimed Mr. Bright ; " why, I understood he gave no leases. 
Have you any objection, friend, to let me see your lease if you have it 
convenient?" "With all the pleasure in life, and sure you are heartily 
welcome, sir," answered the farmer. The farmer got his keys and 
unlocking a cabinet displayed before the gaze of the astonished English- 
man a huge blunderbus. With a twinkling in his eye and patting the 
weapon the farmer said : " Yes, sir, here is my lease, and as long as I 
hold this there is no fear that Mr. Goodbody will dispossess me while I 
pay him his rent." Mr. Bright took a hurried departure, astounded at the 
farmer's audacity. 

The early part of this year, 1878, saw three of the Fenian prisoners 
liberated on tickets of leave : Color Sergeant McCarthy, Mr. O'Brien, and 
Mr. Michael Davitt. On their arrival by mail boat at Kingstown they 
received an enthusiastic Irish welcome ; crowds climbed on top of the 
railroad carriages struggling to shake hands with the liberated men. 
Among those who went down from Dublin by special train to greet them 
were Major O'Gorman, M. P., and Mr. John Ferguson, the famous Glasgow 
publisher and a stanch Irish Provincialist. Westland Row, Dublin, and 
the environs of the railroad terminus were crowded with people to give 



2o8 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the released men a cordial greeting. The Dublin bands turned out and 
they were escorted by a crowded procession to their hotel. 

Mr. Davitt, the most prominent of these men living, was arrested 
through the curious fact of an Irishman whose tendency was secretiveness 
carried to an extreme. Mr. Davitt had been arms agent for the Irish 
revolutionists in the north of England and supplied arms to any of the 
Irish circles that required to purchase them. As these duties were partly 
commercial, Mr. Davitt took into partnership an Englishman, a Mr. 
Wilson. The I. R. B. centre at Portlaw, County Waterford, ordered some 
rifles for his men and they were shipped to Waterford, to be kept at the 
goods depot until sent for. This centre was an exceptionally silent 
man ; he took no one into his confidence as to the route by which the 
arms would come. He took ill of fever and died, and his secret was 
buried with him. The baggage master at the depot, who was an ex- 
constabulary man, noticed this box lying in the store so long uncalled 
for, had it opened, and when its contents were revealed communicated 
with the British authorities. On the rifles were the names or private 
marks of the Birmingham makers. The British detectives were set on 
the track by the clew these captured arms gave them, and the result was 
the arrest of Mr. Davitt and Mr. Wilson. Mr. Davitt tried in the noblest 
manner to save the Englishman from punishment by volunteering to take 
upon himself the two sentences, but Mr. Davitt might have known that 
this could not be. The Englishman, to many men's view of the matter, 
deserved a very heavy sentence for his unpatriotic conduct. Although 
he might have been told nothing of Mr. Davitt's surroundings, still 
he must have suspected, no matter how carefully Mr. Davitt tried to 
mislead him, that these arms were intended for Irish revolutionists to use 
when expedient against Britons, his countrymen. And for the sake of 
the money in the business he was satisfied to be silent and assist. Most 
people believe in every man standing by his own nation and condemn 
this man Wilson. What in Mr. Davitt was a noble duty was an act of 
treachery to his country on the part of the mercenary Briton, who ought 
to have got the severest penalty. But Mr. Wilson only copied the treason- 
able actions of Birmingham gunsmiths, who arm Africans and Asiatics to 
fight their fellow-countrymen. Since his sentence Mr. Davitt has had a 
" noble vision." At this hour it is a cargo of dictionaries he would supply 
his countrymen with to teach them to collect a choice number of exple- 
tives to convince the Saxon. Words are Mr. Davitt's modern weapon 
of war. 

Of the three men released was one exceptionally noble fellow, whose 
assistance to Ireland had she taken the field in 1865 would have been 
most valuable, Color Sergeant McCarthy. This brave Irishman did not 
live long to enjoy his freedom. A few days after his arrival in Dublin 
he died suddenly of heart disease, brought on by prison cruelties. 
His wife, who was on the way to Dublin, heard of his death on her 
arrival in the city. All that British prisons had given up to her was her 
husband's corpse. 

What comparison can there be between the short terms of imprison- 
ment which our friends of the League can receive placed beside these 
men's sufferings, endured for many years, in England's savage penal 
dens ? 

Do Irishmen remember that there are to-day numbers of their coun- 
trymen — or has their sympathy all gone to the Leaguers — suffering the 
same mental and physical tortures which done to death Color Sergeant 
McCarthy ? 



CHAPTER XIV. 

(1878.) 

CLOSE OF THE FEDERAL ERA. 

The Russian War — Mr. Gladstone and the Fenian Prisoners — Home Rule Conference in 
Dublin — Mr. Dillon's Resolutions — Mr. Butt's Rejoinder — " Dealing a Death Blow 
to Ireland " — Mr. Dillon Implored to Withdraw his Resolution — Mr. Farnell's Amend- 
ment — Mr. Butt's Resignation — Meeting of Committee — Mr. Butt's Address — The 
Dublin Irishman on the Failure of Agitation — The Flag of Ireland — " Sinking of 
the Federal Ship" — Home Rule Parties — Mr. Mitchell Henry and the Parnellites — 
Mr. Butt on Obstruction — Mr. Butt's Letter to Dr. Ward, M. P. — Ireland a Nation 
versus a Province — Manifesto of Policy from Obstructionists — Mr. Butt's Criticisms 
— The Two Policies — Release of Messrs. Ahearne and Clancy — Story of Mr. Clancy's 
Arrest — Last of the Fenian Prisoners — Public Meeting in London — Mr. James 
Clancy's Able Address on Prison Sufferings — Close of the Year 1878. 

The year of grace 1878 opened with a great shock to the Tory 
Premier's policy. Russian troops, in spite of all English military prophets 
to the contrary, crossed the Balkan range, and were in victorious march 
toward the ancient capital of the Empire of the East. Lord Beacons- 
field called the Parliament together one month earlier than usual. The 
British Premier, having made his sovereign an empress, had retired to 
the quiet precincts of the Upper Chamber with an English earldom. 

He summoned the Legislature to vote his Ministry six million pounds 
sterling to pay for the expenses of mobilizing the army reserve and call- 
ing out the militia. It was simply a game of brag, as Lord Beaconsfield 
had not the slightest idea of taking the field, without an ally to aid him, 
against Russia. He pleased the British in making them believe he was 
frightening the Russian bear by mustering England's puny reserve and 
bringing a few regiments of Indian troops to Malta. 

Russia knew very well England would not and could not fight. For as 
Count von Moltke said of the British troops, they were splendid soldiers, 
but not numerous enough to make a decent baggage guard for an army. 

The Parnellite Parliamentary party took no active interest in this 
European question, only to hope that Britain would go to war, so as to 
enable Ireland to avail herself of any difficulties England might get 
involved in. The Premier's release of Fenian prisoners at this juncture 
looked suspiciously like trying to conciliate Ireland in the possible out- 
break of a great war. The Dublin Freeman in its issue of January 5, 
1878, comments thus on the release of these prisoners : 

'• If the prisoners had been released in compliance with the public 
demand for justice and mercy made by the amnesty movement, and after 
the eloquent appeal of Air. Gladstone last autumn, it would have been 
regarded as an act of grace entitled to respectful acknowledgment, but 
like every other concession from England, it has come too late." 

How short-lived are the memories of politicians. The Freeman 
speaks of Mr. Gladstone's appeal for clemency in the autumn of 1877. 
If this statesman's words had any sincerity in them why did he not 
release them when he himself was Premier ? The indignation of the 
Greenwich Irish electors in 1874 will be remembered. Truly the "Grand 
Old Man " has always been toward Ireland the prince of hypocrites, and 
yet Irishmen continue to place implicit trust in this scholarly and able 

209 



210 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Englishman, whose deeds so outrageously contradict his honeyed words 
of sympathy. 

In one of the debates in the House of Commons Mr. Parnell thus 
commented on the effect of trying to conciliate English rule : Irish- 
men might hold meetings in Dublin until they were black in the face 
without securing attention to their grievances, but if war with Russia 
were to occur he thought that attention would be directed in a special 
and focible manner to redress the grievances of Ireland. 

What a difference between the energetic Parnell of that day, inclining 
toward Nationalism, and by his people thought so full of promise, and 
the same man to-day (1887). 

At a public meeting in Barrow-on-Furness, England, Mr. Parnell, 
speaking upon conciliation, said that his predecessor, John Martin, 
found out before his death that it was useless to endeavor by constitutional 
means and fair representation to get justice for Ireland. His (Parnell's) 
course was this — Englishmen insisted on their going to London to 
manage their affairs, and they would help them with a vengeance. 

A Home Rule conference was held in Dublin. Many looked forward 
to see a serious division in the Home Rule ranks over the question of 
obstruction ; the London press, ever eager to record differences among 
Irishmen, forgetting how Englishmen attack each other over party dif- 
ferences. There has been witnessed by Irish visitors scenes in English 
clubrooms during political debates between Tories and Radicals that 
would put to shame the insulting allusion to Donnybrook Fair. Never in 
any Irish gathering has there been seen the slightest approach to these 
English rows. 

The Home Rule conference was getting through its business as har- 
moniously as possible, and the question of "obstruction " had not been 
alluded to, when Mr. John Dillon proposed the following resolution : 

"Whereas, it is desirable to seize all suitable opportunity of demon- 
strating both to the English people and foreign nations that the Irish 
nation so long as it is deprived of its national right to self-government 
can have no community of interest with England in her dealings with 
foreign powers, this conference is of opinion, should the question of inter- 
vention arise, that the Irish party ought, through its leader, to repudiate 
all sympathy with England on this question, and that the party ought to 
emphasize this declaration by leaving the House in a body before the 
division." 

He said the adoption of such a course would no doubt create a great 
feeling of anger in the House of Commons, but it would do more to con- 
vince the British of the deep wish of the Irish people than even a repeti- 
tion of the scenes of 1867, and far more than any debates in the House 
of Commons, where Mr. Butt by his eloquence won nothing for the 
Irish people but the honeyed words of wily Ministers who, calculat- 
ing on his amiability of temperament, used him as their tool. 

Mr. Butt said if they passed this resolution all they had done in the 
way of conciliation was at an end. It would be the death knell of 
the Home Rule party. A more deadly blow at the heart of Ireland could not 
be struck. (Cries of " No ! ") Gentlemen might say " No." He thought 
he knew something of what would be the effect on public opinion. They 
had not watched with him over the cradle of this Home Rule move- 
ment, they had not watched over the efforts to build up a party such 
as they never had in Ireland before. He confessed he was tired and 
disgusted with men who had no experience putting forward their opinions 
there with an air of authority. It was a recision of the very first prin- 
ciples of the " Home Rule League "; he believed the resolution was illegal. 
Was there ever such an abandonment of the great cause of the Irish 



CLOSE OF THE FEDERAL ERA. 211 

people? . . . He implored Mr. Dillon to withdraw the resolution if only 
as a sacrifice to that unity which characterized their proceedings. 

Mr. Parnell moved as an amendment that if any definite issue be 
raised on the Eastern question, which is an Imperial question, it will be 
the duty of the Irish Parliamentary party to consult together and to carry 
out as a party a united line of policy and of action. Mr. Dillon seconded 
Mr. Parnell's amendment, which was carried. 

Mr. Butt, in his appeal to Mr. Dillon to withdraw his resolution, said 
of it that " a more deadly blow could not be struck at the heart of Ire- 
land." The number of deadly blows — according to the logic of Irishmen 
attempting the impossible, conciliating England — that Ireland has 
received and the many times the actions of Irish patriots who run counter 
to these people's cherished West-British views place their country back a 
century is marvelous. If by the light of these people's reasoning Ireland 
were placed so often centuries behind in human progress, the logical infer- 
ence would be that, the country having been put back so many centuries, it 
could have no actual existence, and was effaced from the surface of the 
globe. 

The whirligig of British party politics, into the vortex of which Pro- 
vincialists are certain to be dragged, has strange contrasts ; the time was 
to come when, according to Mr. Dillon's supposed changed patriotic 
views, another deadly blow had been struck at Ireland's heart, and Ire- 
land put back at least another quarter of a century ; the language Mr. 
Butt used to Mr. Dillon and Mr. Parneil they in turn, as they became 
timid and vacilliating by British Parliamentary association, used to other 
men. But unlike Mr. Butt, the Parnellites were only playing a part when 
they denounced those who remained faithful to the standard of genuine 
self-government, which Mr. Dillon at this later time deserted. 

April 15, 1878, Mr. Butt communicated to the committee of the Irish 
Parliamentary party his intention of resigning his position as leader, 
assigning as his reasons ill health and his inability to attend to profes- 
sional and Parliamentary duties at the same time. The committee com- 
municated with Mr. Butt and asked him to reconsider the matter and 
then to inform them of his final decision. 

Mr. Butt, in response to a telegram, arrived in London to attend a 
meeting to consider the question of his proffered resignation of leader- 
ship. 

Mr. Butt, in the address he delivered to the committee, wakes a sad 
responsive thrill in the Irish heart. How many men of ability have eaten 
away their souls in trying to accomplish self-government for Ireland by 
the impossible course of British Parliamentary politics ! What a pity to 
see such a number of splendid Irishmen lose their health and corrupt their 
nationality in attempting what has never been accomplished, the granting 
of even the smallest material concession to Ireland by a British Legisla- 
ture ; listening to British statesmen promising, always promising, for the 
accomplishment of party purposes — if in opposition — only to realize what 
tyrants they become when in power ! Mr. Butt in addressing the com- 
mittee said : 

" I had hoped to associate my name with benefits to my native land. 
My colleagues will readily believe that I do not lightly give up that prized 
position and sever myself from those cherished hopes." 

The Dublin Irishman, April 13, 1878, speaking of Mr. Butt's proposed 
resignation said : 

" The resignation of Mr. Butt shows that the Home Rule organization 
is on its last legs, and with its final collapse will disappear forever the 
hopeless sham of constitutional agitation." 

Unfortunately for Ireland this prophecy has not been fulfilled. So 



212 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

long as Ireland has slavish dreamers who in blind folly mislead the 
masses, and mercenary men who see the means to reap a golden harvest, 
so long will Ireland have agitators. When her people throw off their 
credulity and think for themselves, and are prepared to make sacrifices 
for freedom, if there are a sufficient number left at home, native govern- 
ment may hope to be on the true road for success. 

The Flag of Ireland speaking of the federal collapse observes : 

" The working classes heard all these fine platform speeches. They 
saw what it all meant : an agitation for the mere purpose of lifting a few 
score of ambitious persons into the English House of Commons. . . 
The federal bark is foundering. Luckily it does not bear Ireland's 
fortunes, or the nation would lament the impending shipwreck of her 
hopes. Perhaps the Irish race will not regret that the Home Rule skiff 
is about to heel over, for when she goes down she will drag with her 
and bury constitutional action into the deep." 

Some pressure was brought to bear upon Mr. Butt, so he resumed the 
leadership of the dying federal movement on May 29, 1878. 

The feeling between the two sections of the Home Rule party was 
becoming daily of an unpleasant nature, and nothing but the fixed deter- 
mination of the Parnellites to avoid collision kept the party together. 
The Buttites were very much in the majority, and except when questions 
of principle were involved Mr. Parnell and his party tried to keep from 
giving offense to those gentlemen, who were supposed to have possessed 
milder dispositions and more equable temperaments than their energetic 
and fiery rivals. 

Experience has taught Irishmen the sad lesson that the so-called 
moderates are very much more immoderate in the expression of their 
views than the Nationalists, and that they have often to bear with vitu- 
peration and calumny from the Provincialists sooner than by replying 
give joy to the common enemy. 

The Whig Home Rulers were very bitter at the course which Mr. 
Parnell and his few followers pursued in Parliament, but they felt com- 
pelled to admit from the results of recent by-elections that the country's 
verdict was in favor of what was termed at that time active Parliamentary 
policy. Mr. Mitchell Henry, a Whig Home Ruler, in a letter to the 
Dublin Freeman, made the following attack on the obstructionists : 

" Their policy is to bring Parliamentary action into contempt and 
substitute for it violence and crime. 

" I venture to say there can be no safety for the party collectively or 
for each of us individually unless a further repudiation is made by Mr. 
Parnell and Mr. Biggar than any to which their names have been put." 

There can be no stronger proof of the corrupting influences of Parlia- 
mentary life, when to-day these men whom Mr. Mitchell Henry accused 
of trying to create a policy of violence and crime are slandering their 
national brothers who have not changed as they did in their devotion to 
Ireland and their willingness to make every sacrifice in her behalf. 

On November 26, 1878, Mr. Butt sent a letter to an elector of Lim- 
erick in which he discussed the then much debated question of obstruc- 
tion. He said : 

" The obstructive policy may prevent the passage of a great many 
good measures, but it can never obtain the passing of one. I am satisfied 
there never was a time when by prudence and moderation more good 
might be accomplished for the country, and a heavy responsibility will 
fall on anyone who mars by indiscretion or violence the obtaining of that 
good." 

This letter was one of Mr. Butt's public protests against obstruction. 



CLOSE OF THE FEDERAL ERA. 213 

He points to Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar, for he' considered they marred 
by indiscretion and violence Ireland's chance of Home Rule. " Prudence 
and moderation," said Mr. Butt : how little do these words apply to 
a dying, struggling nationality, sinking deeper in those shifting sands of 
destruction which her foreign foe designs should swallow her up. Better 
for Ireland to throw what in a different case might be the motto of wis- 
dom to the winds, but in hers would be the motto of " folly and inani- 
tion." Let her answer with McMahon at the Malakhoff, " Je suis ici, Je 
reste/ '.' when asked to retreat by the most "prudent and moderate " of 
leaders, or with Grant in the Wilderness exclaim, " We will fight it out on. 
this line if it takes us all the summer ! " It is a noticeable fact in Irish 
history that when leaders of the Irish people become what they miscall 
" prudent and moderate " they grow in proportion more loyal to the 
British enemy, and proportionately more disloyal to their own nation's 
interests. Mr. Butt, in a letter to Dr. Ward, M. P., one of the Home Rule 
party, written on November 29, 1878, deprecates any intervention of Irish 
business to interfere with British and Imperial interests in any manner. 

" Parliament is convened for the purpose of deliberating on matters- 
of vital importance to the United Kingdom. We should act very 
unwisely if without the most imperious necessity we interrupted or 
embarrassed these deliberations by the discussion of questions which 
we can bring forward with far better chance of success at a future stage 
of the proceedings of the session. Such a course would fairly expose us 
to the suspicion of pressing the claims of Ireland not for the purpose of 
obtaining a recognition of them from Parliament, but either with the 
object of serving the interests of party or of creating confusion in the 
councils of the nation at a time when to do so is to help the cause of its. 
enemies." 

How confusing are some of the passages of Mr. Butt's letter ! He 
speaks of serving the interests ot party, but by doing so it would cause 
confusion in the councils of the nation. The nation here alluded to it is 
presumed is the British nation, and the party whose interests are not to be 
served at the British nation's expense are the representatives of another 
nation — the Irish nation. Now if there exists no Irish nation, but a 
party ox province within the British nation, as Mr. Butt's letter would seem 
to imply, by what right did Mr. Butt demand for that party a separate 
Parliament from that of the British nation, of which they were — -to 
follow out the meaning of the letter — a part ? As well might Devonshire 
or Northumberland demand separate Parliaments, and call the legisla- 
tion of each of these shires Home Rule. How completely did Mr. Butt 
cut the ground from under his own feet and that of the most moderate 
of moderate Home Rulers when he speaks of the British nation as if it 
were his country and its enemies Ireland's enemies, and its interests 
Ireland's interests. Fortunately for Ireland the Great Creator of the 
world left this question in no doubt. Unlike the warring nationalities of 
France and Germany, Britain is not on Ireland's frontiers, and although 
through centuries of persecution she has forced upon that country her 
language, she has not yet destroyed hers. But she could never force upon 
Ireland her border line. The sea that dashes in all the glory of freedom 
against her rock-bound coast speaks in majestic tones the Almighty's 
decree that Ireland is a nation, and which decree her sons must fulfill 
by making her free and independent. 

Mr. Butt, in his third letter to the electors of Limerick, quotes a 
manifesto of what was termed the advanced section of Home Rulers,, 
which appeared in the Nation of November 2. This manifesto was- 
written with reference to a meeting in the north of Ireland, at which a 
resolution was passed calling on Irish members to retire from Parliament, 



214 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

on the ground of the hopelessness of any effort to obtain justice. Against 
this resolution the writer of the letter protests, and argues against it by 
showing the use to which the Parliamentary representation of Ireland 
may be put. 

" Their very presence in Parliament will keep Ireland's claims before 
England and the world, and for the enforcement of those claims they 
can put upon the British Government a degree of pressure which will at 
last become intolerable and irresistible beyond doubt or question. The 
Irish people are beginning to have a clear conception of this fact. They 
are beginning to see that for them the British Parliament is the vital 
point, and at the same time the exposed point, of England's political 
system. They know that they can hurt England there and nowhere else. 
England's forts and barracks are constructed to repel hostile attacks, and 
without formidable means it is impossible to effect their overthrow. 

" The British Parliament, the most important of English institutions, 
the very citadel of her power — is not constructed on the same principles. 
It is open to our operations. We have the right of entrance there, and 
we can disrupt it from within. It is built on the assumption that every 
man who gets inside will be a friend, a guardian of England's interests, 
a helper of her designs, an abettor of her policy. There is where Ireland 
has the grip of her, if Ireland knows how to take it and use it. There is 
where the pressure can be put on ; the hurt can be given and the peril 
created and maintained until England consents to undo the injustice of 
the legislative union." 

He (Mr. Butt) must leave it to every man's conscience to say how far 
he would be justified in obtaining the power of sharing in the proceedings 
of the House of Commons by taking the oath of allegiance to the queen and 
then using that power to baffle all her measures, confuse all her councils, 
and disrupt the citadel of her power; but would any man who coolly 
reflected on it believe that a great and powerful nation would permit this 
to be done ; that any representative assembly in the world would allow 
itself to be forced into action which it disapproved by a small number of 
its members, declaring that until that action was taken the business of 
the House of Commons itself should be exposed to the various annoyances, 
troubles, and defeats that might be planned ? Why, they know very little 
of Parliamentary law, or of the power and temper of the House, who 
suppose that some means would not be found for speedily putting this 
down. At all costs and hazards it would be crushed. What power of 
resistance is there ? 

All ends in a miserable submission unless they have the means of 
defeating the British cannon and dismantling the British fortresses. To 
this it must come. England is plainly told there must be rebellion within 
the walls of the House of Commons, but they wouid soon find that rebel- 
lion within those walls could only be supported by rebellion in its most 
natural place — the field. 

Of all expectations that can be entertained, the wildest seems to him, 
that by such a course of policy England could ever be induced to undo 
the legislative union. It would put no pressure upon her. Any exercise 
of power that might be necessary to stop it would be approved of by the 
whole English people, and by numbers of Irishmen. 

The two Parliamentary policies are explained and simplified in this 
letter of Mr. Butt. The Irish leader's (Mr. Butt's) policy is the policy 
of the present hour : conciliate the British people ; the then policy of 
the new departure (Mr. Parnell's) was to use the forms of the House of 
Commons to obstruct the business of British legislation, and so exasperate 
the English people that they would eventually rid themselves of the Irish 
members by giving to them a native Parliament. Mr. Butt's criticism of 



CLOSE OF THE FEDERAL ERA. 215 

this course is in a measure correct ; it could not, nor can any Parliamentary 
course gain for Ireland what she needs — self-government. To think that 
it would be possible to do England any serious injury in Parliament, as 
in the letter of the obstructive quoted by Mr. Butt, could only exist in 
the imagination of the writer. Material injury of any kind can only be 
done by some species of physical force. 

The action of Mr. Parnell drew upon him the attention of the Irish- 
Americans. Mr. Davitt, who came to America on National business, 
made a very able address in Brooklyn near the close of this year. Some 
of the Irish-Americans, carried away with this new weapon to hurt Eng- 
land, and not thoroughly understanding the position of things on the other 
side, advocated the sending of Fenian members into Parliament ; it is 
presumed the gentlemen meant Irish Nationalists, who believed in 
physical force, but were waiting for the time to come — that time which 
never comes to men or nations ; they must make it for themselves. 
Sending of men of this kind into Parliament would merely mean their 
loss to the National cause. A little while there, and they would turn out 
West-Britons like the rest. An Irish-American combated this idea by 
stating that, " No physical force formation as such have any business 
dabbling in agitation ; their very reason for being consists in the inflexible 
resolution which they should hold not to meddle with it." 

At the end of the year 1878, the last of the Irish revolutionary 
prisoners were released. These gentlemen were Messrs. Ahearne and 
James Clancy. The last named prisoner was one of the most gallant 
and determined of the Irish soldiers in the enemy's service. Mr. James 
Clancy was, like Mr. O'Reilly of Boston, a private soldier in the British 
army; he belonged to that scientific corps, the Royal Engineers, and was 
enrolled in the National organization, called at that time Fenians. Mr. 
Clancy, anxious to take the field, left the enemy's service at Chatham, 
where the engineers were quartered, at the end of the year 1865, that 
memorable year when Irish patriots expected that they would be in the 
field striking at the foe of their country and race. Mr. Clancy was one 
of the leading Irish revolutionists in London, and was coming from the 
residence of one of the then Revolutionary chiefs, when he was followed 
by Sergeant Choun of the engineers, who shadowed him, suspecting he was 
the missing engineer he was in search of, but not quite certain. On this 
Saturday evening, January 18, 1878, Sergeant Choun, accompanied by 
Constable Chamberlain, accosted Mr. Clancy at the corner of Tottenham 
Court Road. Irish Revolutionary soldiers, when armed, were under 
orders not to surrender to the enemy, but to shoot and if possible escape, 
but in no case to surrender without making a fight, as it was very prop- 
erly considered cowardly for an armed man to give himself up to the foe 
without a struggle ; else, why carry arms at all ? In this they were 
cautioned against following Mr. Stephens' and his companions' example, 
when arrested at Fairfield House, Dublin. Mr. James Clancy, like Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald, whom Major Sirr attempted to seize, resisted to the 
death. When Sergeant Choun attempted to seize him, he tripped up the 
Britisher by placing a stick between his legs, and giving him a parting 
kick, ran off swiftly to effect his escape. But Choun, helped by Chamber- 
lain, was soon on his feet and they promptly pursued the flying Clancy. 
After running some distance in the direction of Bedford Square, the 
Irish soldier found his pursuers gaining on him. Turning round and 
facing the British officers, he discharged a shot from his revolver at 
Sergeant Choun, the bullet whistling unpleasantly close to the ear of the 
sergeant ; for a moment the engineer and his comrade hesitated, Mr. 
Clancy resuming the race with fresh vigor ; but recovering themselves, 
the Englishmen again took up the chase. After running some further 



2l6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

distance the gallant Irish soldier turned round and discharged a second 
shot at his pursuer Chamberlain, who was nearing him fast. Chamber- 
lain staggered back in fright, but quickly recovering himself took up 
the pursuit, at the same time calling on those in the street to help them 
by stopping the flying Irishman. An English passer-by responded and 
seized Clancy, who would have got away,but for Chamberlain coming up. 
By their united exertions they tripped up Clancy and he fell to the 
ground, still grasping his revolver firmly. The Irishman's blood was up 
and the dauntless fellow would die before he would surrender. While he 
was struggling on the ground with his captors, he pulled the trigger of 
his revolver, aiming at Chamberlain's breast, who would most certainly 
liave been slain, but there appears to have been a pin in the pistol (join- 
ing the parts of the instrument) which projected and stopped the bullet. 
The bullet stuck between the chamber and the barrel, and was held there, 
though the powder had exploded. Had the ball passed the barrel, 
Chamberlain would inevitably have been shot, for as it was his face was 
blackened by powder and his hair and beard singed by the fire. As 
Chamberlain afterward expressed it, Clancy would be the last Irish Fenian 
he would try to capture ; they were the most daredevil fellows in creation. 

A crowd now gathered, and Choun coming up, the gallant Irishman 
was overpowered by numbers ; not content with bringing him off a 
prisoner, the cowardly brutes beat him on the head, face, and body, 
when he lay helpless at their mercy. 

What a contrast was this gallant and determined resistance to that 
of some would-be heroes of that period, who either were taken in arms 
or whined " guilty " when in the dock ! 

Mr. Clancy was brought before a British magistrate with his head 
bandaged ; the enemy made no charge against him for being an Irish 
revolutionist ; they wished it to be considered non-political, so that the 
world would not understand the reason for Mr. Clancy's desperate resist- 
ance, and that such a scene in connection with the Irish war was not 
-enacted in their great metropolis. Mr. Clancy was charged with an 
attempt to shoot the officers and for being a deserter from the Royal 
Engineers, and was sentenced to penal servitude for life. After serving 
eleven years of torture in the enemy's dungeons, at the close of 1878 Mr. 
Clancy was released, the enemy at last admitting he was a political 
prisoner. To Mr. O'Connor Power's credit be it said — although he is 
now lost to Ireland — he never deserted any of his former comrades, the 
Fenian prisoners, and while a Provincialist he used his parliamentary 
position and influence to further their release. 

It is a remarkable fact what a number of ex-Irish Fenian prisoners 
there have been on the New York press. It contradicts the lying state- 
ments of the enemy that the Fenians were recruited from the ignorant 
.and uneducated. Mr. James Clancy is to-day one of the brilliant writers 
von the New York Herald. 

Shortly after Mr. Clancy's release a public meeting was held in London 
to hear the lately imprisoned patriot deliver a lecture on the tortures of 
British prison life. The hall was filled with all the London advanced 
Nationalists. Mr. Parnell was to have presided, but he could not get 
there. Mr. G. F. Goulding, a prominent Irish Nationalist, took the 
chair. Mr. Clancy delivered a very interesting lecture, which was listened 
to with rapt attention. He evoked great sympathy, as he detailed with 
much pathos and great ability the sufferings he himself and his comrades 
had undergone in England's penal dungeons. 

The year 1878 closed to usher in the eventful year of land agitation, 
when the Provincialists, aided by Irish-American money, built up a 
gigantic organization to fight the Irish landlords. 



CHAPTER XV. 
(1879O 

BIRTH OF THE IRISH LAND LEAGUE. 

Machinery of British Rule — Land Bailiff, Agent, and Landlord — Chairman of Quarter 
Sessions — Resident Magistrate — Inspectors and Sub-Inspectors of Constabulary — 
The "Head" — Dublin Castle Privy Council — The Irish Peasant — His Humiliating 
Position — Illness of Isaac Butt — His Last Moments — Death of Mr. Butt — Meeting 
of the Home Rule Party — Election of Mr. Shaw as Chairman — Land Meetings — 
Mr. Parnell and Mr. Shaw — Fenian Convention in Wilkesbarre, Pa. — The Tory 
Chief Secretary — "Jimmy Lowther " — Land Meeting in Tipperary — " Pay no Rent 
without Reduction " — Attacked by English Press — Land Meeting in Mayo — Mr.T. D. 
Sullivan's Address, " Infantry and Cavalry of Mayo" — Meeting at Headfort — Duke 
of Marlborough's Speech at Agricultural Dinner — Lord Carlisle and the " Flocks and 
Herds" — Lord Mayor of London's Banquet — Speech of Lord Beaconsfield — Land 
Organization in Ireland. 

The year 1879 closed the Home Rule League era in Ireland, or 
nearly so, and ushered in that great social organization, the "Land 
League." Already there were mutterings around that boded no good to 
that haughty and insolent class, the landlords, and as if to hasten their 
destruction came the famine harvest of 1879. ^^ e price of Irish produce, 
owing to the competition with the United States, then rapidly increasing 
her exports to Britain, had seriously diminished in value. The facilities 
which were created by science to place American dead meat in the 
market alarmed the grazers and those engaged in the cattle trade. It 
needed no deficient harvest to make the farmers suffer ; the fall in prices 
was sufficient to give them grave cause for uneasiness. They who have 
read anything of Ireland must be familiar with the sad tales of eviction 
handed down from generation to generation — that one continued trail of 
blood which marks England's career, her laws, and management of the 
soil of Ireland. 

Well and ably has she been assisted by the harpies she sent to prey 
upon the land. First comes the bailiff to warn the tenant farmers that 
an increase of rent is necessary next gale day-»-more money for the idler 
who preys upon the peasant's toil ; next the agent, that mighty man at 
whose frown whole townlands tremble ; behind him and in the far-away 
distance stands the landlord, the supreme master. He holds the happi- 
ness and peace of mind of a whole countryside in his hand. His smile is 
the sun of their existence, his frown the depths of their deep despair. 
To assist this lordly potentate and preserve to him all the honors and 
glory of ruining the poor peasants and the power of evicting and flinging 
on the roadside helpless, poverty-stricken families, the sick, the dying, 
the aged, the young, and the feeble, stands the terrible machinery called 
British law. To work this death-dealing machine, there appears at 
intervals the Chairman of Quarter Sessions, a lawyer of possibly small 
ability, a man who worked his way by slavish devotion into one or other 
of the two great British parties, till he secured his position on the bench. 
Possibly in early life he posed as a Provincialist agitator, and told his 
admiring hearers on the hustings that he longed for the day when Ireland 
would " up with the banners and the spears," and all the fustian and 
claptrap belonging to such speakers, and thus induced the simple, deluded 

217 



218 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

peasantry to flock to the polling booths to elect this great patriot, who, 
when elected, gives his services to one of the British parties. Liberal or 
Tory, it matters nothing to the Irish people ; by and by he is rewarded 
with a chairmanship. 

Vested in his new dignity, he reproves his former peasant supporters 
for their many and numberless backslidings ; with what oily unction does 
he recite the statistics of crime in the district (at least seventy per cent. 
of it manufactured), and though addressing a peasant auditory, his words 
are intended for the greater ones not present, which would be borne to 
them on the wings of the press. 

His former admirers are summoned to his court to show cause why 
they should not be evicted from their holdings. Then the writs fall thick, 
as leaves in Vallombrosa, and a townland would be wiped out of exist- 
ence ; and where the cheery voice of the peasant laborer was heard, and 
the song of the milkmaid warbling the melodies of her beloved Erin, 
there came desolation ; the cabins were razed to the ground and the place 
knew them no more ; they were banished and the soil they tilled was 
made grazing ground for cattle. Next in magisterial dignity comes the 
stipendiary and resident magistrates. Their duty is to preserve the peace 
of the locality, to see that none of the serfs who dwell around give the 
smallest trouble to the even and destructive flow of London-made law 
under them, and sometimes in reality commanding and dictating to them, 
are the Inspectors of Constabulary. These haughty enforcers of the laws 
are generally a class that try to ape the manners and supposed dash of 
the British cavalry officer. The subs are in most part composed of white- 
gloved dandies of the " haw, haw " school ; underneath this foppish 
exterior lies cold cruelty, callousness of feeling to human suffering, 
cowardice in many cases, and in all a supernatural worship of the occu- 
pant of the British throne. Next to these Inspectors in rank, is that 
important Irish dignitary, the Head Constable. What pen could attempt 
to do justice to this imposing village monarch, the " Head," as he is 
invariably called ? See him strut down the village street ; how the poor 
and humble slink away as if to avoid the majesty of his frown ! even the 
police constables salute him with fear and trembling. They who are 
petty tyrants with the peasantry are abject and submissive in the presence 
of the mighty " Head." Mark the expression of the well-to-do farmers 
and the village shopkeepers ; how eagerly they look for his gracious nod, 
and how happy and proud are they to know that he condescends to 
unbend and talk friendly with them, and they mention the circumstance 
of a conversation with the >' Head " to give additional tone to their own 
importance ! The Head Constable speaks of " Her Majesty's mails," 
" Her Majesty's forces," " Her Majesty's Government "; the pompous way 
in which he pronounces, " Her Majesty," with slow, solemn, and sonorous 
tones, as if he did not wish to part with these two sweet words, as a 
gourmand lingering over the precious morsel of some favorite dish! Such 
is the paraphernalia which British law (or more properly the illegal man- 
dates of foreign usurpation), hedges around and assists those twin destroy- 
ers of the Irish race, the landlord and his agent, in their nefarious work 
of evicting and depopulating the country. 

Over these sits the dark and gloomy shadow of Dublin Castle, the 
citadel of foreign power in Ireland. There the machinery is set in 
motion ; there in secret conclave sit the " Privy Council," a despotically 
constituted body — to order the whips and spurs to be applied to certain 
districts, and sometimes the whole country. But beyond and looming 
above all these, there stands in the majesty of power, the government of 
Britain ; looking down approvingly on the work of her destroying 
angels. There, Irishmen, stands your foe! Do not waste your resentment 



BIRTH OF THE IRISH LAND LEAGUE. 219 

on her minions, but at the fountainheatl and seat of power, that ordains 
these murderous missions in your fair land. 'Tis the British Ministry, 
who separately and concretely are the absolute masters of your country's 
ruin and destruction, commissioned and empowered in their cruel work 
by the vast majority of their fellow Britons. Is it not time that the seat 
of devastation and destruction should change from Irish mountain sides ? 
That the horrors of Glenbeigh, Bodyke, and Mitchelstown should be 
transferred in justice to the neighboring island ? 

The humiliation and abject servility of the Irish peasant farmers, in 
the presence of the agent or the landlord, was more degrading than even 
Oriental slavery. The writer remembers on one occasion in Newry, an 
agent who was collecting rents in the hotel where he was staying ; there 
were some aged peasants standing in the streets, bareheaded 'neath the 
downpouring rain, interceding with one of the agent's assistants with 
tearful eyes and pallid, trembling lips, for a little mercy. To travel then 
in Ireland was heartbreaking to any proud-spirited Irishmen who loved 
his native land. 'Tis true that in many respects things now are changed. 
The peasant bears himself with less abject servility before the agent or 
landlord, but these changes are but the outward forms ; the essentials are 
unchanged. There is no more the slavish doffing of hats and trembling 
limbs, when the master and the serf meet — for serf the tenant farmer 
remains j the landlord still indulges in the luxury of evictions ; the Land 
League, which has brought about this more manly attitude toward the 
landlord and his belongings, has but removed the serf's obedience to 
the landlord's master, British Rule. The peasants are taught to look 
upon the English masses, their cruel enemy for generations, whose votes 
created and endowed landlordism, as Ireland's friends. They whose 
actions made the horrors of alien rule possible, Irishmen have been 
taught to look upon as their allies against the infamies which these very 
people's rule inflict upon the Irish masses daily. To-day the mountain 
peasant, as he sees these agents of London rule — the police and 
emergency men — bent upon their errand of destruction, is taught to cheer 
for his arch-destroyer, William Ewart Gladstone, a man beneath whose 
sway more destruction has been caused in Ireland than any dozen living 
British statesman of this generation. These may be unpalatable facts to 
some Irishmen, according to the present policy of their vacillating leaders, 
but the fact remains to challenge contradiction from any of those men, 
who now doff their hats to that Gessler Gladstone, whom so recently 
they themselves, in coarse language, reviled as Jtidas and assassin. 

Mr. Butt found the toils of his professional labors in addition to his 
Parliamentary duties heavy to bear. In February, 1879, he caught cold 
returning from a professional visit. He got better and again relapsed. 
He was removed to Roebuck, near Dublin, for change of air. Great 
anxiety was evinced by the Irish people, for they honored him as another 
great Irishman who had served them according to his light, loyally and 
faithfully, and whose health was undermined in vainly struggling for them 
in the London Parliament. They also remembered his gallant defense 
of the Irish patriot prisoners, in which he exerted himself almost to a 
superhuman effort in their service ; his marvelous defense of Robert 
Kelly, who shot that doubly-dyed traitor and spy, Constable Talbot, the 
wretch who desecrated God's altar in the service of his no less infamous 
employers, the British Government, and who died in horrible agonies, 
blaspheming his Creator. Mr. Butt's defense of Robert Kelly was 
no less a triumph of forensic skill and mastery of the law on his part, than 
was the ability displayed by his witness Dr. O'Leary, who sat as Home 
Rule member for Drogheda up to his death. Dr. O'Leary's scientific 
skill as an anatomist proved to the jury's satisfaction that Talbot came 



220 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

by his death through unskillful treatment in the hospital, in probing 
for the bullet, and not through the effect of Kelly's shot. No one had 
the smallest spark of pity for Talbot, not even those who used this 
murderous instrument to deceive and betray his Irish victims. Mr. 
Butt's days were coming to a close. The voice that often rang in the 
British senate, pleading for his country and exposing and denouncing her 
persecutor, was soon to be hushed in death. A little while and the last 
spark flickered and went out, and the loving soul of Isaac Butt passed 
away into that unknown country beyond the grave. 

He died on May 5, 1879, and his nation truly sorrowed at her loss, 
none more full of grief than they who did not believe his measures could 
be successful, but who knew his great heart and his honesty of purpose, 
and in the spirit of sincere regret they placed their wreath among the 
others on the dead patriot's bier. 

On May 22 a meeting of the Home Rule leaders was called for the 
purpose of electing a chairman of the party to succeed the late Mr. Butt. 
The following resolutions were put and carried : 

" That a chairman of the Home Rule Party be appointed, and that said 
chairman shall be official chairman of all meetings of the party and of 
its committee ; that he shall have authority to speak as the mouthpiece 
of the party in the House of Commons on any subject to which the party 
has come to a resolution, and that he be authorized to summon meetings 
of the Parliamentary committee and on any emergency of the party. 

" That Mr. Shaw be requested to act as chairman during the session." 
Commencing in January, 1879, Mr. Parnell started on a tour through 
England for the purpose of reorganizing the Irish element. The mem- 
ber for Meath was most untiring in his exertions. He got through more 
work in the Provincial cause and with his own immediate following of 
advanced Home Rulers, as they were termed, than did the whole remain- 
ing balance of the party. On August 9 Mr. Parnell was re-elected Presi- 
dent of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain. 

The Convention Act, passed by the Yeoman's Parliament in Dublin 
to prohibit the volunteers from sending delegates or Irishmen to assemble 
as a representative body, was repealed this year. The advanced Home 
Rulers were anxious for the party to avail themselves of the repeal of 
this act, to call a Home Rule convention in Dublin. 

A meeting was held and arrangements made to issue summons to 
have delegates elected and duly instructed to attend this convention. 
The result of this meeting was published in the newspapers. Two weeks 
after the chairman of the party, Mr. Shaw, wrote a letter disapproving of 
this course. Mr. Parnell was very much incensed at the receipt of this 
letter, and in his reply to Mr. Shaw said that he had remained silent all 
these sixteen days, though he had notice that a course was to be proposed 
which he now tried to persuade them was fraught with the most direful 
results. Why did he not propose his course while there was still time to 
consider it ? If he considered a convention of limited capability of such 
vital moment, why did he not say so ? The Convention Act had now been 
repealed for many months, and the course to be adopted in consequence 
had been the subject of repeated notices at the council of the League and 
of much discussion in the press and in conversation, but Mr. Shaw, the 
Sessional Chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party, takes no action. 

On September 18, Mr. Shaw wrote to the Secretary of the Home 
Rule League, declining to be placed on the committee to arrange for 
a National convention. 

A special meeting was called in consequence of this convention. It 
was moved by Mr. Parnell, M. P., and seconded by T. D. Sullivan, Esq.: 

" That the council, entertaining the highest respect for the opinion of 



BIRTH OF THE IRISH LAND LEAGUE. 221 

Mr. Shaw, have attentively considered his letter, but feel themselves 
unable to take any fitting action in the matter of the convention, all 
control over it having passed out of their hands since the meeting of the 
League on the nth of September, of which due notice was given in the 
public press on the 25th August." 

The English journals at this time announced what they called a 
Fenian convention, held in August at Wilkesbarre, Pa., U. S. A. 
Several comments were made uncomplimentary to the gathering ; one 
particular fact they were all unanimous about, that there had been a 
serious quarrel among the leaders, which could not be settled peacefully, 
and that the convention broke up in utter confusion, which meant the 
abandonment of every attempt to revive the defunct organization. 

How absurdly ridiculous are British organs when they attempt to 
inform their readers of Irish movements ! 

The great land question now forced itself to the front ; the harvest 
was a failure, the crops in some portions of the country not equaling 
half the average produce. This, taken together with the great fall in 
prices, made the outlook a very serious one for the Irish tenant farmer. 
For numerous families who farmed small patches of land, which even at 
the best of times was a struggle for existence, it meant starvation. 
Ireland was threatened with a fearful famine, unless her alien rulers 
stepped in and saved the people from the impending terrible fate that 
was suspended over them. But the English Ministry was deaf to the 
voice of Ireland ; the Chief Secretary in Dublin Castle, who represented 
the Tories that then usurped Irish government, was the Honorable 
James Lowther, an English sporting man, and one well known on the turf, 
where he was familiarly spoken of as " Jimmy Lowther." This scion of 
English nobility had the most utter contempt for Ireland and every- 
thing Irish. He made not the slightest attempt to conceal this feeling, 
and both in Parliament and in Dublin Castle never disguised his detesta- 
tion of the inferior race of beings whose destinies had fallen 'neath his 
sway. 

Whenever deputations waited on him, even of the West-British por- 
tion of the community, he received them with such supercilious patron- 
age and sneering insults that Jimmy Lowther became very unpopular in 
Ireland, an honor, to do this gay sportsman justice, he seemed to court. 
He put aside as exaggerated stories the news brought him of an impend- 
ing famine. Even the Duke of Marlborough, the lord lieutenant, who 
was personally a very amiable man, looked upon all such statements at 
this time as highly colored and that it was most improbable that they 
would be realized. 

Mr. Parnell was fully alive to the situation, and with trumpet tongue 
gave voice to the fearful doom he foresaw awaited the people if prompt 
measures were not taken. Land meetings were held all over the country. 
Town and country people and dwellers in the large cities became now 
fully alive to the desperate condition of affairs. Mr. Parnell was ubi- 
quitous. He attended meetings and made addresses in every imagina- 
ble distant place. The amount of work he got through at this time was 
enough to tax the energies of half a dozen men. 

A great land meeting was held in Tipperary town on Sunday, 
September 21. The meeting was held on the Fair Green, where a plat- 
form was erected for the speakers. The country people thronged into 
the town from all parts of the neighborhood. They were anxious to see 
and hear Mr. Parnell, who was to be present ; also the patriotic Arch- 
bishop of Cashel,the Most Reverend Dr. Croke. Banners were displayed 
in all directions, and bands of music enlivened the occasion, which was 
quite a holiday for the people. Among the several mottoes displayed 



222 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

were the following : " Tipperary," " Ireland for the Irish," " In the name 
of God and the Democrats of Ireland we Demand the Surrender of 
Castle Rack-rents." This last was a huge banner, which was promi- 
nently displayed. The Rev. Mr. Farrell, P. P., presided. Archbishop 
Croke said their crops had failed, their commerce was languishing, 
their money resources were exhausted ; creditors were importunate and 
landlords for the most part unrelenting. Indications were not wanting 
to show that the winter was likely to be rendered memorable by a dearth 
of food and fuel throughout the country. 

Mr. Parnell's appearance evoked long, loud, and continued cheers. 
He said : 

" Bearing in mind the four disastrous seasons which have crowded 
together on the Irish farmer, it was incumbent on them to stand together 
and ask for a reasonable reduction of rent. (Applause.) And if such 
reasonable reduction of rent were not granted, it was their duty to pay no 
rent at all. (Applause. A voice, " That's coming to it.") If they were 
determined they had the game in their own hands. Let them band 
together and strengthen those that were weak, and let them organize 
themselves and refuse to take farms from which tenants have been 
evicted. (Applause.) Providence was on their side, and even the ele- 
ments that day were fighting for them." (Loud applause). 

Mr. Parnell finished in torrents of rain. 

This advice of Mr. Parnell to pay no rent unless a reasonable reduc- 
tion was given was widely commented on by the British press and by the 
landlord organs in Ireland. They said that "Communism of the most 
frightful kind had invaded the country," and these newspaper articles 
usually finished up with an appeal to the British Government to take 
prompt and firm measures to nip in the bud this socialistic movement — 
a movement which had for its object the destruction of all private 
property. 

On September 20 a great land meeting was held in Tuam. The 
mottoes displayed were " Land for the people," " United we stand, 
divided we fall," " Behold the dawn of Freedom," "God save Ireland," 
" Down with the Tyrants." Mr. James O'Connor presided. Mr. P. J. 
Costello moved a resolution " That in view of the widespread and alarm- 
ing distress which threatened the people with a recurrence of the horrors 
of 1847, the tenant farmers should be allowed such a reduction of rent 
as their desperate condition imperatively demanded in order to save 
them from impending ruin." He deprecated the use of any language 
which would be taken hold of by their enemies, and repudiated the 
imputation of desiring to confiscate the property of the landlords or 
promote revolutionary doctrines. 

Mr. Michael Davitt seconded this resolution. He said it afforded an 
opportunity for the landlords to show their sympathy with the people, 
and he thought it would be for their interest to grant its request or 
demand. 

On Thursday, September 25, a land meeting was held in Listowell. 
A procession of farmers and laborers from the neighborhood and Bally- 
duff, headed by a brass band belonging to the latter place, entered Lis- 
towell with a large banner borne before it ; on one side was the inscrip- 
tion " God save weeping Erin," and on the other " God save the oppressed 
from the oppressor." 

The Rev. Mr. O'Sullivan, P. P., presided. He said he deplored the 
want of foresight in the Kerry landlords. He predicted a widespread 
and formidable agitation that would convulse the country and would not 
cease until the tenants got fixity of tenure with fair rents. Letters were 
read from two of the local landlords excusing their absence — the Knight 



BIRTH OF THE IRISH LAND LEAGUE. 223 

of Kerry and Lord Listowel. The latter in communicating his reasons for 
not being present at the meeting, wrote : " I regret it the less as I should 
doubtless if there be asked to reduce my rents, a request with which I 
could not comply under the present circumstances." 

Thus spoke the typical Irish landlords. With these views on this ques- 
tion, held by Lord Listowel and men of ;his class in the presence of the 
severe distress prevailing, it can be easily 'seen what a difficulty the 
farmers' friends had before them in trying to rescue the people from the 
grasp of approaching famine, and also to reconcile these antagonistic 
interests : that of the landlord in abating his demand, and the action of 
the tenant, who by any precipitancy or lack of judgment in the course 
pursued, would deprive himself and family of even the shelter of a 
home. For behind the landlord was British law, backed up by the 
military forces of the invaders, opposed to which the Irish peasant had 
nothing to offer but the justice of his cause, and the utter impossibility 
of meeting the landlord's demand. This interesting land problem is still 
unsolved ; the Irish people have had occasion since to observe its vary- 
ing phases. 

On the day of the Listowel meeting, three hundred tenants on the 
estate of Lord Normanton went into the town of Tipperary, headed by 
the Rev. Maurice Power, P. P., to meet Mr. Taylor, agent, at Dobbyn's 
Hotel, and asked for a reduction of rent. Mr. Taylor at first refused, 
but after some time offered to abate fifteen per cent, to tenants whose 
half year's rent did not exceed ^25 ($125.00); to tenants whose half 
year's rent did not exceed £50 an abatement of ten per cent., and five 
per cent, to tenants whose half year's rent exceeded ,£50. The farmers 
refused the offer as insufficient. Mr. Parnell's advice to organize was 
quickly taken, and Land League branches started up all over the country. 
Meetings were held denouncing landlordism and advocating removing it 
from Ireland so far as resolutions of a strong and determined tone of 
expression could destroy this hated institution. At a meeting in Castlebar, 
presided over by Canon Magee, Chancellor of the Archdiocese, the princi- 
pal speakers were Mr. T. D. Sullivan, Mr. O'Connor Power, M. P., Mr. 
Daly, of the Castlebar Telegraph, and others. 

Mr. T. D. Sullivan, of the Dublin Nation, and author of the ballad 
" God Save Ireland," Lord Mayor of Dublin this year of grace 1887, 
in addressing the tenant farmers, styled them " The Infantry and Cav- 
alry of the County Mayo." Another meeting was held the same day at 
Headfort, County Mayo, Mr. Davitt being the principal speaker. Nation- 
alists have often noticed the erratic and contradictory views of their 
countrymen the Provincialists. At this Castlebar meeting, where so 
many prominent Home Rulers were on the platform, men who to this 
date profess what is called Home Rule views, Mr. Daly in his speech 
in their presence said that they did not want Home Rule — it was dead 
and buried with Isaac Butt. But they would not take anything less than 
that. The tillers of the soil should be the owners of it. It will be 
noticed that throughout this agitation, the speakers in all cases told the 
peasantry what their needs were, which, if conceded, would be an 
undoubted boon to many of his listeners, but they also impressed upon 
their audience the fact that they would, as a matter of course, by asking 
for it get it. The consummation of their hopes were all but accom- 
plished facts ; the same absurd conclusions are still preached. 

In the meantime the very respectable sporting gentleman whom 
Britain sent over to govern the neighboring island which she affection- 
ately calls the sister country, kept on never minding. Jimmy Lowther 
indulged in his sneers at the savage Irish and their proposterous demands. 

The descendant on the distaff side of John Churchill, Queen Anne's 



224 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

coarse but successful soldier, lived in quiet ease, enjoying the pleasures 
and honors of his mock sovereignty. His gracious and amiable lady, the 
Duchess of Marlborough, tried hard to win the Irish heart by appearing 
in green poplin dresses on several occasions. She thought that wearing 
the national colors should win the Irish Celt to love the stranger's rule. 
She probably imagined their nationality was a mere sentiment caused, as 
her husband's chief, Lord Keaconsfield, expressed it, " by their dwelling 
on the borders of a melancholy ocean, which excited their fancy and 
inspired their imaginations." 

One of the strong characteristics of John Bull is his gastronomic 
propensities. He likes good feeding and plenty of it. Travel in Eng- 
land, visit at the country seats of the wealthy and exclusive, or any 
rung on the social ladder of English life, and you will be sure to hear 
cooking and eating discussed with intense relish and classic enjoyment. 
You will hear from the most aesthetic a description of their favorite dish, 
and the delicious effect if cooked in some especial manner. The agricul- 
tural dinner is one of the county events in English aristocratic life. 
They have tried to introduce many of their customs into Ireland, but 
they are not indigenous to the soil, and like rare exotics require the tender 
care of English training to preserve them in the Green Isle. Among 
these festivals comes the Irish agricultural dinner, at which England's 
lord deputy invariably attends. One of the standing toasts at this 
banquet, after the queen and royal family, is " Prosperity to Ireland," 
and coupled with the toast, as if in Mephistophelian humor, is the name of 
his British excellency, the lord lieutenant. 

It was at one of these agricultural dinners, that George Gordon, Earl 
of Carlisle, delivered his famous speech when responding to the stereo- 
typed toast " Prosperity to Ireland." Lord Carlisle might be termed 
Ireland's poet lord lieutenant. During his viceroyalty, he published a 
volume of poems, in which he speaks of " The weeping skies of Erin." 
He was a portly, pleasant, amiable old gentleman, with a rubicund face 
that bespoke good living. His silvered hair lent a dignity to his appear- 
ance which he rarely assumed. In response to the toast he recited the 
statistics, poured out for him with his port wine, of the number of sheep, 
cows, horses, etc., which the county contained ; this particular year the 
number of cattle had increased in Ireland ; they had taken the place 
of the expatriated people. This fact delighted the kindly British soul 
of the English earl, and he painted in glowing and poetic imagery 
the future great destiny of Ireland. She was to become " The fruitful 
mother of flocks and herds." No doubt there was more truth in the 
destiny he depicted than Irishmen would wish to admit. It is, however, 
the certain result of the disastrous war waged against Ireland, and gibingly 
termed " Peace." It is the destiny which Britain is forcing upon the 
Green Isle — banishment and death by starvation, and workhouse horrors 
for the people — to make Ireland a grazing ground for English beef and 
mutton. 

In the year 1879 the agricultural dinner came off on the 8th of August. 
The impending famine and failure of the crops were the subject of public 
discussion at the time, yet the crowd that sat down to that banquet did 
not believe in the truth of these statements. The Duke of Marlborough 
in response to the toast " Prosperity to Ireland," said that he believed 
that the farmers of Ireland were in a much better condition than the 
farmers of England, for the depression was more oppressive in England 
than here, as the holdings were larger and there were larger sums invested 
in them. He was told on competent authority that if a fairly scientific, 
intelligent system of farming was adopted in Ireland there was a latent 
amount of wealth in the country that would amply repay all efforts 



BIRTH OF THE IRISH LAND LEAGUE. 225 

expended on it, and that Ireland was capable of returning more than 
twice its actual revenue at the present moment. 

In conclusion he expressed his belief that the prosperity of Ireland 
was internally connected with the pacification of Ireland. Let law and 
order prevail and, above all, let those bitter animosities which proceeded 
from religious differences be abated, and he would predict a future of 
great and exuberant prosperity for the country. 

The English duke was right. Irish farms are not scientifically farmed ; 
and if Irish tillage were properly developed, the soil could more than 
double its present produce ; but on this hinges diversity of industries to 
give employment to the people, so that larger farms could be created ; 
also the disappearance of religious discord at present mustered and 
fostered into life by British statesmen for their own vile purposes. All 
these changes, law and order included, all hinge on one factor, the disap- 
pearance of foreign rule, which is the author of all these evils. When 
Irishmen can haul down the British flag from Irish soil and bow the 
English invaders out of the country, these blessings will follow, but not 
till then. 

Land meetings were now taking place, north, south, east, and west. 
Landlordism and England was denounced in every possible manner, and 
the most convincing arguments used to show the Irish masses where the 
evil lay, and the crowded audiences were told these evils must go. But 
none of the speakers told their hearers that any other weapon was neces- 
sary but denunciation ; exposing the evils could of course remove them, 
and the speakers were applauded and the crowd shouted, " Pay no rent." 

If ever a government was arraigned at the bar of public opinion, then 
British rule in Ireland has certainly been ; their infamous treatment of 
the people has been exposed by generations of eloquent Irishmen. Charles 
Stewart Parnell took up the truncheon of exposure with determination to 
succeed by its power. He traveled and talked with indefatigable zeal to 
save his fellow-countrymen from famine graves. His expose of Lord 
Beaconsfield's Administration was masterly. Its neglect and apathy in the 
face of the fearful distress is to be said of all English ministries. Truly 
did Mr. Parnell depict them standing by with folded arms, and so they 
and their successors will continue to stand, while their machinery of 
government dashes the life out of the people in its crushing, mangling 
career, and they will take no heed, talk how you may, expose them how 
you may, bring to bear as you now have the public opinion of the world — 
they will continue utterly indifferent until you use some sharper and more 
effective weapon than the tongue, to stir their Anglo-Saxon blood into 
more effective circulation. 

At the Lord Mayor of London's annual banquet the English Premier, 
in response to the health of Her Majesty's ministers, invariably takes the 
country into his confidence and speaks of what the coming policy of her 
Majesty's Government may be ; anything of importance is usually fore- 
shadowed at these Guildhall dinners. So they have always been looked 
forward to with great interest by the British people, particularly if any 
grave question was on the tapis. At the banquet this year the Earl of 
Beaconsfield, K. G., rose to respond to the toast, " Her Majesty's Minis- 
ters." The English Premier, Lord Beaconsfield, was a brilliant and effec- 
tive speaker at all times, but he was considered more especially happy 
as an after-dinner speaker. The following are the allusions he made to 
Ireland in the course of his lengthened remarks : 

" I wish I could say the same of our brilliant brethren in Ireland. 
(Cheers and laughter.) I wish they had proved themselves a little more 
emulous of the English people. (Cheers.) The Irish are an imaginative 
race, and it is said that imagination is too often accompanied by somewhat 



226 THE IRISH NATIONAL INV1NCIBLES. 

irregular logic. (A laugh.) But I confess I cannot bring myself to com- 
prehend how the Irish people have brought themselves to believe that the 
best way to encounter economical distress is political agitation and social 
confusion. (Loud cheers.) There is no doubt that there are portions of 
Ireland where it may be necessary that some means should be applied to 
avert considerable suffering, and the subject has duly received the atten- 
tion of Her Majesty's Government. But I think Ireland ought to remem- 
ber that in her distress she has never appealed to the sympathy of England 
in vain (cheers), and that sympathy has generally assumed a very substan- 
tial embodiment. (Loud cheers.) My Lord, it will be the duty of Her 
Majesty's Government to watch with the anxiety which the situation 
requires the state of those portions of Ireland ; last I would venture to 
hope that the Irish people, convinced, on reflection, that the sympathy of 
England — a sentiment which is never scantily supplied to them — will even 
condescend to recollect that if they have had a bad harvest, that harvest is 
much better than that of England." 

My Lord Beaconsfield was right ; the Irish have had English sympathy 
extended to them, and as he expressed it, a very substantial embodiment 
of it, in the shape of coercion. Some eighty odd coercion bills in as many 
years is full proof of England's sympathy. Many easily duped Irishmen 
are now ready to believe that a change has come over the English people. 
Hence, patience, Irishmen, and you will see what an ignis fatuis you 
are following ; that change will take place on that day and not till then, 
when the Ethopian shall change his skin and the leopard shall lose his 
spots. 

Each day that passed toward the close of that eventful year proved 
the correctness of Mr. Parnell's statements, that the country would suffer 
another of these British-made periodic famines, which swept whole fami- 
lies away, and filled the coffinless paupers' graves of 1847. But if organi- 
zation could save the people it was being carried out. Thanks to the un- 
tiring energy of the good men around Mr. Parnell, Ireland was growing 
fully alive to the importance of the emergency, and if she could avert the 
impending blow, Ireland was preparing. Her people were in possession 
of the important fact that something should be done quickly ; the founda- 
tion of the Land League had been laid, and Ireland was about to witness 
the formation of a gigantic agitation extending over the world, wherever 
Irishmen dwelt, to peacefully fix the tiller on the soil. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

(1879.) 

SPREAD OF THE LAND AGITATION. 

Mr. Parnell's Exertions — Irish Land Distress — Discussion in England — Opinion of 
English Merchants — Talk in Radical Clubs — English Workingmen's Hostility to 
Ireland — Irish Trade and Manufactures — Prospect of Irish Manufactures — Irish 
Water Power — Ireland as a Commercial Rival to Britain — Nations and their Flags — 
Mr. Pairiell's First Visit to Cork — Met at Cork Terminus by Accident — Land 
Meeting in Cork — Speech of Mr. Shaw — Gladstone's Bill Full of Principles — Mr. 
Parnell's Speech — Men of 1847 and 1879 — Condition of the Tenant Farmer — 
"Rational Resistance" — Article in Dublin Weekly News — Views on the Article — 
The Mallow Landlord and his Good Tenants. 

The distress in the country was becoming daily more severe. Mr. 
Parnell thought he saw the opportunity to build up a huge peaceable 
organization to relieve the suffering tenantry in the present by bringing 
such a pressure of public opinion on the landlord that he would remit a 
considerable portion of the rent, or else compel him to do so by refusing 
to pay him or his agent any money but what the struggling farmer could 
afford in the then state of the country — suffering with a deficiency in the 
harvest and a fuel famine over the land. Owing to the inclemency of the 
past summer the turf could not be saved, excessive rains having destroyed 
the farmer's winter stock. Mr. Parnell also thought he could remove the 
land evils which oppressed the agricultural community, and by Irish and 
American public opinion, expressed in public meetings, shame England 
into altering the land laws of Ireland so that there could be no future 
recurring famines. Upon this crusade of shaming England Mr. Parnell 
started out with commendable energy ; and to get the whole community 
enlisted in his movement he persuaded himself, and afterward the Irish 
race the world over — or the great masses who have neither leisure nor 
knowledge to think out this great problem for themselves, and who 
submit their judgments almost blindly to the care of others — that the 
English rule would disappear with the landlords. In all his public 
addresses he pointed out clearly Ireland's wants and his remedy : legal 
and constitutional agitation, coupled with what the British — who, having 
stolen the land now hold it by force — considered both illegal and 
unconstitutional, namely, the refusal to pay rent. True, Mr. Parnell 
qualified this advice by using the words "unjust rents," which in most 
Irishmen's estimation would be any rent, as the Irish land came to its 
present owners, not by purchase, but by confiscation, a polite word for 
robbery. The British Government and the landlords differed with Mr. 
Parnell and the farmers. They considered the rent levied off the soil 
both equitable and just, and termed the advice of Mr. Parnell to the 
community an incentive to public robbery. The thieves, secure in the 
possession of their plunder and with plenty of physical force to sustain 
them in its enjoyment, called the people of Ireland, whom their ancestors 
plundered of their property, "robbers," because they did not quietly not 
only surrender the fruits of the soil, but also the fruits of their own 
industry and toil and that of their generous kinsfolk in America and 
Australia, whose remittances they were pocketing, as the soil could not 
in the great majority of cases produce under the system of tillage the 

227 



228 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

farmers could employ near the rent levied off it by the lordly being who 
enjoyed the luxury of his ancestor's confiscations. The landlords to this 
day receive their rents in part through these foreign remittances. Now 
here was a plain and palpable issue between the landlords and the British 
invaders on one side, and Mr. Parnell and the Irish people on the other. 
Mr. Parnell's theory was and .is that public opinion would be a powerful 
weapon in his hands, and that by shaming the British people and their 
Government he would succeed. The British, who kept in Ireland a large 
standing army, and armed military police called constabulary but who 
really are more soldiers than police, did not keep these expensive and 
dangerous toys for show. They used them to enforce their demands, 
and no matter how unjust these demands might be in equity, they had to 
be obeyed, the British having the power to make what laws for Ireland 
they pleased, no matter what the Irish thought on the matter ; the 
invaders never consulted them. The voices of their representatives 
are powerless in the London chamber ; their logic and reasoning carry 
no conviction to the foreigner's mind ; it is all sound and no sense to 
them. Whatever they make up their mind to do, they will do ; and though 
these Britons wrangle and quarrel among themselves as to the most 
appropriate manner to destroy and plunder the Irish, they never during 
their own differences lose sight of British interests, which is Ireland's 
destruction, whether through hypocritical kindness and slow poison or 
by heroic remedies which irritate and madden. In either case national 
death must ensue if their rule in any shape or form continue. Nothing 
but the marvelous recuperative power of the people has hitherto saved 
them. Had this great continent of America been so easily reached one 
century ago, the Irish nation would have been wiped out of existence and 
would now be merged into the various races that constitute that magnifi- 
cent specimen of the Caucasian which is to-day called American. 

Mr. Parnell breathed new energy into the movement ; he galvanized 
into active life the lethargic and sluggish members of the community ; 
every important meeting possible he attended and addressed, and 
impressed upon his hearers the necessities of the hour. He was ably 
assisted by numbers of talented Irishmen — many of these young men 
enthusiasts who really did, but cannot possibly now, believe in this 
crusade of shame. Young men started out to collect funds all over the 
American continent and in Australia ; many of these who joined the 
movement were poor men, and were compelled to make a livelihood by 
the agitation ; and later on when they saw its folly, were still necessitated 
to cling to it as a means for promotion in worldly esteem and social and 
financial positions. They could not possibly quarrel with the goose that 
laid for them such golden eggs. 

The sums expended in keeping up the organization naturally were a 
great drain upon the subscriptions. When people read of the number of 
meetings held they must recollect the expense of travel by railroad and 
water ; all came out of the Provincialists' public treasury. Hotel bills had 
to be paid, so that additional meetings entailed additional expense. 
Nationalists find no fault with this ; revolutionists would have to expend 
money when engaged in any active work. But what should be pointed 
out is the gigantic interest created, the giant corporation, which had to 
be preserved even if it ran counter to Irish interests ; some of these men 
may have given their services for less than they would be worth in a 
commercial community, but then there exists no market in Ireland for 
these men, who but for the agitation would probably be unknown outside 
of their own circles. Hence it must be said agitation became an attractive 
career to brilliant young men ; and when they learned, as the majority 
of them must have, that their crusade of shaming England was an utter 



SPREAD OF THE LAND AGITATION. 229 

impossibility, their own personal interests and future career became by 
degrees so inextricably involved that they continue preaching false doc- 
trines — doctrines which they believed were feasible when they started 
out. Hence it must be said that these Provincialist agitators are ruinous 
to Ireland, and cannot possibly serve real national interests. The agita- 
tion against the landlords was like stirring up a nest of hornets ; the 
sequel has been disastrous for the farming community ; evictions multi- 
plied, and those who did not remember the trite saying, " Better let 
sleeping dogs lie," brought suffering where they meant to bring relief. 
In one year the evictions were more numerous than during the ten years 
previous to the starting of this crusade of shame. They have created a 
giant Frankenstein that is crushing out all healthy national life. In a 
word, the people have grown more impoverished ; they have furnished 
speakers with ample food for discussion — the horrors of Glenbeigh, 
Bodyke, and numerous other similar scenes. But the agitators have 
prospered ; they have not suffered like the poor peasant who lost his all 
in the impossible course of ridding Ireland of landlords. Yet some of 
these agitators stand up unblushingly in the face of day and tell Irishmen 
they are near the end, that the landlord must go, and will soon. Do they 
mean to tell sensible thinking Irishmen that the system which oppresses 
and impoverishes their people will go and British rule remain? Nation- 
alists may blunder and may make many grievous errors ; they may have 
had selfish, mercenary men in their ranks, but a war for independence — 
guerrilla or otherwise — is practicable ; it can always be used as a weapon 
against the foe. If intelligently carried out it means destruction of some 
sort to the invader without sacrificing half the number of people that the 
present system is doing. It is Ireland's only real remedy. Wordy agita- 
tion is a huge soap bubble in its opposition to the invader, and must 
bring certain destruction to the Irish race in Ireland if persevered in. It 
wastes the supplies, it saps the energies, and poisons the national life, 
corrupting the young men by false teachings. A people might as well 
float a company to run balloons to the moon. It would be as intelligent 
a way to spend money as they are doing to this date in this silly attempt 
to rescue a nation. Revolutions have succeeded : Belgium, Hungary, 
Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Chili, Peru, Mexico, and the other American 
republics, including this grand free nation, the United States — but agita- 
tion has never freed a people enslaved by another nation. The Provin- 
cial ists cannot name a single instance. 

The English papers began to speak of the Irish land agitation. Whole 
columns were transferred to the English press of Irish news ; even the 
London Times fully reported the various speeches delivered. The 
English people had ample opportunity to educate themselves on Irish 
grievances if they cared to do so. No Irishman could attempt to urge, 
as a plea for English opposition, lack of knowledge of the Irish grievance. 
In addition to the broadcast advocacy of Irish demands, the Irish element 
in England, through the exertions of Mr. Parnell and his friends, were 
thoroughly organized, and the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain 
seconded the exertions of their brothers in Ireland to inform the English 
masses of the exact position of affairs in Ireland. 

Irishmen living among Englishmen had a good opportunity of judging 
what effect this spread of knowledge on Irish matters had upon the 
English mind. Among the merchants and the commercial community 
the cause of Irish distress was attributed first to the inherent laziness of 
the people, who had acquired such sluggish, careless, and improvident 
habits, that it was almost impossible for the fostering agency of British 
civilization to reform them into anything like a decent mode of existence ; 
and another great evil, an immense surplus population, which having no 



230 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

employment, was an incubus on the whole community, and their only 
remedy for this evil was emigration. These men, who were daily engaged 
in trade, manufacture, and commerce, could not be brought to see that it 
was Ireland's deprivation of these industrial occupations, which builds up 
the wealth of nations, that was the material cause of her poverty-stricken 
condition. This deprivation of manufactures was brought about through 
the jealousy and avarice of British merchants in the past, supported by 
British-made laws, and Ireland of to-day is completely crippled and can- 
not attempt to build up an industrial structure until she acquires the 
control of her own destinies, and thus becomes enabled to aid and foster 
their infant development. Tell this to the British merchant or manu- 
facturer and he would be unable to confute your reasons logically, but 
would be always sure to fall back upon that self-satisfying British conso- 
lation, that Ireland had the same laws and opportunities to progress and 
prosper as they, the British people enjoyed. Go into the British Radical 
•clubs where the aristocracy, the House of Lords, aye, and even the 
Sovereign herself, were handled in no kid-gloved manner — these people, 
who were advocating and struggling for more liberty for their class, were 
the most bitterly hostile and antagonistic of Englishmen against any 
attempt on the part of Irishmen to set up a separate legislature, or to 
have a separate national existence. These freely expressed views have 
been heard by Irishmen time and again, when the speakers were not 
-aware that anyone present was not of their own nationality — so that cour- 
tesy — of which the English masses are not overburdened — in no way 
interfered with the full flow of their opinions. 

When people nowadays tell the Irish that this is all changed, and that 
the English masses are ranging themselves upon the side of Ireland, they 
know little of the strength of English prejudice and hostility to the Irish 
race, which is innate in their character ; and where their interests would 
be in any way interfered with, popular opinion is by no means slow to 
express itself. And it is impossible to settle the Irish difficulty without 
interfering with British interests. It is not alone sentimental Home 
Rule Ireland demands, but material self-government, to enable her people 
to prosper in this world's comforts and necessities. An Irish legislature 
that would be a reality and not a sham, would be compelled to put pro- 
tective duties on British and all foreign manufactures going into Ireland, 
as Canada and the Australian governments do to protect themselves, 
against what is in their case, to a large extent, the mother country. And 
this Irish legislature would probably set aside a portion of the national 
revenue to offer as premiums to manufacturers to encourage and build 
*up native industries, as little Belgium did after her separation from the 
Netherlands and on the establishment of her independence. Not only 
Irishmen in the United States, but even the people at home, do not 
realize how vast are British interests wound up in this. No one but a 
person engaged in British commercial life could ever dream of the 
monopoly Britain enjoys in Ireland as a trading and a manufacturing 
•community. The land question dwarfs itself into insignificance in the 
presence of this mighty loss to Ireland. 

To establish manufactures in Ireland, which with her immense water 
power and natural resources would soon spring up under the fostering 
influence of a native government — and cannot possibly be created other- 
wise — Britain would not only lose her Irish trade, which is very large, 
but she would be growing within a few hours' sail of her shores a com- 
mercial rival, and all that Irish art, skill, and genius did for her, in her 
commercial career, would then be employed in developing the resources 
of their own nation. Manufactures by the Nore, Suir, Lee, Shannon, and 
Liffey mean a certain loss to Bradford, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, 



SPREAD OF THE LAND AGITATION. 231 

and Paisley. Is it in human nature that these people will peacefully sur- 
render this vast interest for mere words, or an appeal to their sentiments, 
appeals which have never yet solved an international question, and never 
will ? 

Look at the almost unanimous action of Britain when Mr. Gladstone 
brought in a bill to buy out the Irish landlords ; when the English people 
learned the immense sum necessary, the hundreds of millions of pounds 
sterling, their opposition was so gigantic that Mr. Gladstone was com- 
pelled to withdraw the measure at once, with but little probability that 
any Government will ever have the courage to repeat the experiment. 
Touch John Bull in the pocket and you touch a very vulnerable part, 
and to remedy Irish grievances and relieve Irish poverty, you must 
do this. 

Those who are talking to-day of a union between the two democracies, 
that of Britain and Ireland, are preaching the millenium. Class interests 
between the workingman and the capitalist may be very strong, and the 
grievances they (the laborers) suffer very keen, but beside the National 
question if sinks into insignificance, for the interests of the democracies of 
different nationalities are not the same; and although they may have just 
cause of serious complaint against the aristocrats and moneyed classes of 
their own country, as the democracy of a neighboring nation may have 
against theirs, there is no common platform save that of humanity — 
which no doubt has ennobling influences — for them to have anything like 
a permanent union ; their clashing and rival interests forbid it, and above 
all, for some inscrutable purpose, the great Creator has grouped mankind 
into families of nations, with different manners, habits, customs, and lan- 
guage. Each nation is proud of her history, jealous of her honor, devoted 
to her flag, and never, while human nature remains as it is, will they 
surrender for class privileges the glorious inheritance of nationhood 
bequeathed to them by their valiant fathers. 

Mr. Parnell, a young politician, had probably not looked upon this 
side of the question. He had not then learned that for the Irish people 
to resolve upon a certain course, did not mean the accomplishing of that 
purpose, for, like a wall of iron, right in their path stood English interest, 
English prejudice, and English opposition which were not susceptible 
to reason, any more than the flame of a candle could thaw an iceberg ; 
susceptible to one thing alone — force ; and if that could be properly 
applied, if the fingers that grasped the prize could be cut, then and then 
alone will she surrender her plunder. 

Mr. Shaw, the Chairman of the Irish Parliamentary party, was a 
wealthy banker, a fortunate marriage having poured wealth into the lap of 
this hitherto struggling Unitarian clergyman. He was a Provincialist, as 
many well-to-do Irishmen are in a social and sentimental sense. He 
coveted the honor of a seat in the British Parliament, and was proud of 
the position he occupied as the successor of Mr. Butt. One thing he par- 
ticularly wished to impress upon the Irish mind, and that was the amount 
of personal inconvenience he was willing to undergo in the service of his 
country. His old, conservative, slow methods did not suit the pressing 
condition of Irish affairs. Mr. Parnell chafed under the leadership of 
such a man, and the Irish people were beginning to see that if Parlia- 
mentary tactics were to be used, a more energetic man than Mr. Shaw 
was necessary to give it a fair chance of success. 

The Irish land agitation had grown rapidly to an immense size, when 
Mr. Shaw awoke to the knowledge that he should do something to aid 
the common cause. A land meeting was about to be held in Cork, and 
it became necessary for Mr. Shaw, as member for the county, as well as 
chairman of the party, to show himself on the people's platform. He 



232 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

accordingly attended with his colleague, Colonel Colthurst, a political 
fossil that sailed under the Home Rule banner. 

The advanced Home Rulers were anxious to get Mr. Parnell to attend 
this meeting, and an invitation urging the young leader to come to Cork 
was mailed to him. Mr. Parnell was very much in demand to speak at 
the numerous Sunday meetings held at this time all over the country. A 
reply came to the Cork men informing them that Mr. Parnell would 
attend if possible. On Saturday night a deputation went to the station 
to meet him, but were disappointed, and so concluded that his engage- 
ments would not permit his coming. Mr. Parnell was announced to speak 
at three different places the next day, Sunday. The next day after church 
three Cork gentlemen, who happened to come into the Victoria Hotel a 
short time before the omnibus started to meet the incoming Dublin train, 
seeing the omnibus at the door, one of them suggested that they drive up 
to the station on the faint chance of Parnell coming. The idea was put 
in practice and to their surprise and delight Mr. Parnell stepped off the 
train, and but for their accidental presence, there would have been no one 
to meet him. The names of these gentlemen are William Conyngham, 
James Lynch, and John King, all earnest Provincialists. As he afterward 
told them, it was Mr. Parnell's first visit to Cork except passing through 
en route to America. He asked who was staying at the hotel ; he was told 
P. J. Smyth. He replied to them : " He is impracticable." This was 
Mr. Parnell's first reception in Cork City, the southern capital, that he 
has since represented in the enemy's Parliament. 

A public meeting was held in Cork City in connection with Mr. 
Parnell's visit, on October 5, 1879, and was attended by thousands of 
people with bands, banners, and the usual paraphernalia of Irish public 
gatherings. The chair was taken by Mr. Riordan, Chairman of the Cork 
Farmers' Club. In addition to the county members, Mr. Parnell and 
several members of Parliament were present on the platform, and of 
course all the leading Provincialists of the city and the surrounding 
country. 

After an interesting opening address on the sad state of Ireland, 
Mr. James Byrne, J. P., Chairman of the Farmers' Club, Mallow, proposed 
the first resolution : 

" That in consequence of three successive bad and inclement seasons, 
which have rendered the land unproductive, concurrently with low prices 
for corn, butter, and cattle, and with losses by disease in cattle and sheep, 
it is utterly impossible for farmers to pay the present rents, and we there- 
fore urgently and respectfully call upon the landlords to bear their share 
of those losses by making substantial abatements to their tenantry to 
enable them to tide over the present period of depression and to save the 
country and themselves from ruin." 

Mr. Shaw, M. P., in supporting the resolution, said he came there that 
day at considerable personal inconvenience, as he had been laid up in his 
own house for the past fortnight. But he was quite determined that this 
series of meetings should not pass over without his appearing on a plat- 
form to express his sympathy with the tenant farmers of Ireland. This 
was not a mere ephemeral agitation. It was not an agitation got up by a 
few men for their own selfish purposes. He knew very well that such 
things had been in Ireland. The bad years of 1877, 1878, and 1879 had 
not been equaled for the agricultural community in his memory. He 
acknowledged that this year as far as they could see the result of it at 
present was not as bad a year as last year was, but it would require one of 
the best years they ever had in agriculture to put the farmer in any posi- 
tion after the two years that they had gone through. This year it had been 
almost impossible to save the crops. The memory of the famine was 



SPREAD OF THE LAND AGITATION. 233 

deep in the minds of the farmers, and its terror and fright had never left 
their souls ; and when they saw two bad years and the third worse than 
the average, they began to feel the position they were in and asked them- 
selves were they about to lose their substance ; and they met together to 
see whether they could not in any way lift themselves from this depression. 
He believed there were many landlords in this county who were the 
most excellent landlords in Ireland, and that it would only require the 
tenants to go to them and to show them they could not pay the rents to 
induce them to make a considerable reduction. This was a year in which 
every class in the community ought to combine together. They were not 
there to perpetrate any injustice between class and class, but the contrary. 
Was this depression temporary? Every farmer felt there were elements 
at work at present — different from every element at work ever before — 
and that this was no mere temporary depression ; it was a crisis in the affairs 
of the landed interests of the country, and they were bound not to apply 
any mere temporary palliatives. They were bound if possible to go to 
the root of the question and to prevent those periodic agitations and dis- 
arrangements of industry, and to obtain a settlement which could be the 
basis of national prosperity throughout all generations. They should 
discriminate between landlords and landlords. But the landlords were 
not the only persons to be blamed in this country. He had been examin- 
ing a district in that country lately ; he found that six men in that dis- 
trict should go to the wall. In only one case, however, had the rent any- 
thing to do with it. The land in that case was let at five shillings ($1.20) 
per acre above living point ; yet a neighboring farmer with two hundred 
acres of land bid for that land, paid the arrears of rent due, and paid the 
tenant a certain sum of money to go out. A voice here shouted : " He 
ought to be shot." As long as human nature is what it is' you will 
always find people on the watch to lay hold of small farms and to add 
them to larger ones. It would not surprise him at all if many men who 
were very eloquent on tenant-right platforms were men who had an eye 
on some of those small farms. We must look all around on this question. 

Now he would say to everyone of them on no account to put them- 
selves in the grip of the law. What were they to do in this crisis ? It 
would not do to have the country agitated year after year in this manner. 
He had brought forward a remedy in the House of Commons with the 
full sanction of the Irish party. But the Right Honorable James Lowther 
called their remedy rank communism. Well, he did not think the right 
honorable gentleman quite understood what he was talking about. There 
were in Mr. Gladstone's bill principles which if applied to the present 
state of the land question in Ireland would be a settlement of the question. 
He would change the whole tenure of land in Ireland. He would adopt 
the plan put forward by Mr. Vernon, one of the Governors of the Bank 
of Ireland, for appointing a commission to sell the lands to the tenants, 
and would make the Church Surplus Fund the foundation for saving the 
national exchequer from loss in carrying on the plan. He asked the 
Government to look at this question seriously. He would put the whole 
of the tenantry of Ireland on a foundation that no landlord could disturb 
without good cause ; that no honest and fair-minded man could object 
to. If these principles were applied there was no doubt that this country 
would soon right itself. He would give every day of his life to see the 
question settled on these principles, but it should be settled by calm 
common sense and by earnest and honest effort. He was quite sure that 
their meetings, which had been run down so much by some persons, 
would result in real and substantial good to the people of the country. 

It will be noticed that Mr. Shaw, in the opening portion of his address, 
in stating that the agitation was not got up for selfish purposes, really 



234 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

insinuated that it was ; the dash and energy of Mr. Parnell did not suit 
this quiet, conservative Whig, and the allusion was intended for the 
member for Meath, who was fully alive to the fact. The chairman of the 
Irish party in the foreign assembly was a devoted follower and admirer 
of Mr. Gladstone, which Mr. Parnell was not at that time. Mr. Shaw tells 
his Irish hearers that there were principles in Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill 
which, if applied to Ireland, would settle the land question. It is one of 
Ireland's many misfortunes that all Mr. Gladstone's Bills for that country 
contain nothing but principles, of which they are plentiful, but when these 
principles are tried to be put into practice there is no machinery found 
in the bill to carry them out. The Irish may in vain search for the appli- 
cation of the principle ; slightly altering the lines of Moore, they are applic- 
able to the Irish search for substantial concessions to Ireland in all Mr. 
Gladstone's measures. 

They've been 

Like a Lagenian mine, 
Where sparkles of golden splendor 

All over the surface shine ; 
But if in pursuit we go deeper, 

Allured by the gleam that shone, 
Ah ! false as the dream of the sleeper ; 

Like love the bright ore is gone. 

They've been like the bird in the story, 

That flitted from tree to tree ; 
With the talisman's glittering glory 

Has hope been that bird to thee ? 
On branch after branch alighting, 
, The gem did he still display ; 

And when nearest and most inviting 

Then waft the fair gem away. 

And like to the Oriental talisman in those Eastern tales from which 
Moore borrowed his metaphor, has Mr. Gladstone's measures of relief 
been to Ireland ; they have always appealed to the Irish imagination, and 
it is supposed that like the Arabian writers, having pleased and satisfied 
the ideal, the people, he thought, would not seek for the real. At present, 
September, 1887, this able and accomplished statesman is dangling before 
the eyes of Ireland a talisman with all " the glittering glory " which his 
eloquent voice can shed upon it and around it. He has labeled it " Home 
Rule," and when it is examined it will be found to be like the Lagenian 
gold, false and illusory. Mr. Shaw's speech was followed by an address 
from his brother county member, Colonel Colthurst, who indorsed and 
emphasized Mr. Shaw's remarks ; other speakers followed ; the third 
resolution was proposed by Mr. Murphy, chairman of the Macroom Board 
of Guardians. It said : " That the Bright clauses of Mr. Gladstone's 
Land Act have failed when it was sought to put them into practical operation; 
we call upon Parliament to complete its work and make the clauses effi- 
cient for their object of creating a peasant proprietary." 

Mr. Parnell, in supporting the resolution, said he had no doubt in the 
next session of Parliament the Bright clauses of the Land Act would 
be so amended as to facilitate very extensively the purchase of their hold- 
ings by many tenant farmers in Ireland. But the amendment of the 
Bright clauses of the Land Act was not at the present moment the most 
pressing need of the country. What they had to consider at this moment 
was not how they might best amend the Land Act, but how they 
might enable the people of the country to tide over the winter, for they 
had a winter before them such as had not been equaled since the fatal 
year of 1847. Now, how were they to maintain the people of Ireland in 



SPREAD OF THE LAND AGITATION. 235 

Ireland under these circumstances ? They had heard that many of the 
landlords of Ireland and of the County Cork were good landlords, 
and would reduce their rents. He was willing to admit that to the 
fullest extent, but it was not the good landlords alone that they had 
to consider ; they had the bad landlords to contend with. Now they 
had not been told to-day what the tenant whose landlord was a bad and 
inhuman man was to do under the circumstances. They had been 
told that the tenant farmer was to keep himself outside the grip of 
the law. In that advice he cordially concurred, but the misfortune of the 
case was this — not that the tenant farmer desired to put himself within 
the grip of the law, but that his landlord desired to put him within its 
grip. Now what were they to do under the circumstances ? He really 
thought this was the question to which the attention of the leaders of the 
Irish people ought to be directed. The good landlord would reduce his 
rents, but what were they to do with the bad landlord ? The bad landlord 
would endeavor to be bad, as they had always been, and if then the 
tenantry proceeded in the old-fashioned way of slavish submission to 
unjust exaction and foolishly bidding against each other for farms from 
which some of them had been evicted, they would have the old evil 
history of 1847 repeated again. While they were on the land was the 
time to take the necessary precautions in order that they should remain 
there, because a very good authority, and an English authority too — had 
told them that possession was nine points of the law. Now he thought 
they had the question very much in their own hands. If they but stood 
together, if they remained firm, if they refused to pay an unjust rent, he 
said the game was theirs, and was theirs already. They required no 
Act of Parliament as a remedy to meet the emergency of this winter. 
No Acts of Parliament would be in time for that emergency ; but they 
had their own strength of mind and their own love of country to rely 
upon. If they relied on these he believed from the bottom of his heart 
that they would win. The people of Ireland knew too much to-day to 
allow themselves to be exterminated as they were in 1847. They were 
not yet decimated by famine. They had still the spirit that physical 
strength gave to resist. When he said physical strength he did not mean 
to advocate an appeal to physical means. Such was not necessary. 
They could work and win their cause without them, by adopting a policy 
of passive resistance to unjust demands and by adopting this altogether 
and united. When they had secured themselves in their lands against 
unjust demands and exactions they could proceed to Parliamentary 
action to obtain settlement of the land questions. But the tenant 
farmers should remember that the country looked to them to help to 
obtain for them the inestimable blessing of legislative independence. 

To follow out Mr. Parnell's reasoning no one can come to any other 
conclusion, but that the logical sequence of the course he advised the 
tenant farmers to pursue must eventually end in the last argument 
between men and nations. Force ! He told them that the men of 1879 
knew better than to allow themselves to be exterminated as they were in 
1847. With all due respect to Mr. Parnell, and his Irish Parliamentary 
friends, on this political issue Irishmen know no better than did their 
fathers or grandfathers ; what was the only remedy fifty years ago remains 
the only remedy to-day. The world has not advanced in any manner in 
finding any other solution of antagonistic issues when diplomacy, or argu- 
ment, or reasoning if you will, exhausts itself, than the ancient weapon 
" Force." 

It is as true to-day as when Hannibal crossed the Alps, when Caesar 
invaded Gaul, down to our own time, even in this Grand Republic. 
When Fort Sumter was fired upon and the National flag insulted, Ameri- 



236 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

cans found argument and persuasion were over ; the time for action then 
came, and they were equal to the emergency. The tenant farmers were 
to refuse to pay unjust rents. The bad landlords would refuse to believe 
they were unjust and would continue to evict. What could the tenant 
farmers offer in opposition to the peremptory demand for surrender, made 
with England's armed forces to sustain the demand ? Where would pas- 
sive resistance come in here ? The farmer finds the remedy presented to 
him no remedy at all ; himself and family must go, as there is no other 
employment for him, Ireland having no industries to offer. He must do 
one of two things, either emigrate or go into the workhouse when his 
money is exhausted. Under the advice of Mr. Davitt, they are pursuing 
a species of opposition to-day which he has given the dignified title 
of " Rational Resistance." With all due respect to Mr. Davitt, Irish 
Nationalists think this so-called rational resistance very irrational indeed ; 
if the object aimed at is a melodramatic presentation of Irish evictions 
to the world and not material results, this sort of rational resistance 
carries out to the full irrational folly. If the serious question of Irish 
nationality is only to be used for excitement and sensational display, this 
advice given by Irish leaders is productive of theatrical tragedy. The 
weapons of this class of resistance are the " rational " ones of white-wash, 
bees, and hot water ; the farm houses and cabins are defended by rude 
intrenchments and chevaux de /rise, and as if in mockery of these prepara- 
tions the defenders are armed with stirabout. If these self-sacrificing, 
devoted leaders who are only too ready to go to prison for Ireland — a 
rather novel way of helping the nation — would make a genuine test case 
of one of these farms ! Let all the women and children be sent away, 
arm the men with rifles and supply these cabins with ammunition, dig 
intrenchments properly constructed, place every kind of obstacle in the 
way of the evictors — chevaux de /rise, destroying the road, and all the 
preparations made for " rational resistance." Let some of these leaders 
who talk so bravely place themselves with the peasantry behind these 
ramparts, determined that the evictor can only reach the homesteads 
over their dead bodies. It will be said that the defenders would be all 
slain ; if so, so be it, but they would die beside their valiant leaders, who 
would be killed with them, sharing the self-same dangers they advised 
the others to practice ; but before they met death each man would put 
at least five of the foe hors-de-combat. This would be actual resistance, 
and might put the enemy to the inconvenience of using artillery to carry 
out future evictions. It is a nobler death to die this way, with manly 
fortitude, resisting tyranny, than to die of disease contracted on a prison 
plank-bed, or the miserable slow starvation caused by evictions. 

It may be said it would be madness and folly to expose the people 
to such resistance. If so, the " Three Hundred" at Thermopylae were 
guilty of madness, and so must have been Arnold von Winkelried at the 
battle of Sempach, July g, 1386, when the brave Swiss saw his country- 
men being overborne by the superior armament of their foes. He seized 
a bundle of the Austrian spears in his grasp, and crying out : " Country- 
men, look to my wife and to my children," threw himself with force upon 
the weapons, bearing back the enemy and making an opening in the 
armor-clad phalanx of his foes, and with the spears transfixed in his 
breast he made a gap for his gallant comrades, by which they pierced 
the Austrian ranks and defeated their enemy. His ears in dying were 
blessed with the Swiss shouts of victory ringing out as they smote the fly- 
ing foe. Such a glorious death was worth a thousand lives, and his name 
shall live while mankind can feel ennobled by sacrifice and suffering, and 
worthy to honor the heroic dead ; as Cicero hath it, " No one could ever 
meet death for his country without the hope of immortality." 



SPREAD OF THE LAND AGITATION. 237 

Was the Roman hero guilty of madness who singly held the bridge 
against the hosts of the invaders of his country ? No ! 

" For how could man die braver 
Than facing fearful odds 
For the ashes of his fathers 

And the temples of his gods ? " 

What degenerate teachings to the gallant Irish race ! " Passive 
resistance " ! Their teachers must know that the farmers will either have 
to pay, fight, or be evicted. 

An interesting article, filled with the peculiar theories then and now 
taught the people, appeared in the number for October 4, 1879, of the 
Dublin Weekly News, a companion paper to the Nation, owned by Mr. 
Sullivan : 

" The landlord has no right, no absolute right, no right at all to have 
rent paid to him unless the produce of the land leaves a profit above the 
cost of cultivation ; what we call rent is not a thing that is always due 
to the landlord whatever happens. It is, properly speaking, a profit left 
over as a residue after the laborer and the farmer have been paid. The 
wages of the laborer are the first charge on the land. The due reward of 
the farmer is the next charge after that, and this should comprise enough 
to pay him for money advanced for laborers' wages, for manure, for seed, 
and such needful outlay ; and also enough to enable him to maintain his 
family decently, to feed, clothe, house, and educate them as befitting his 
position, and, in short, to hold his place and theirs on a par with the 
persons who do for other industries what he does in relation to the land. 

" Why should the farmer's way of living be kept down lower than that 
of the shopkeeper ? There is no reason whatever why it should. The 
farmer's service to the public is as important as the shopkeeper's. His 
calling requires as much care and skill, his labor is more anxious and 
more exhausting. Therefore it follows that he should be clothed and fed 
as well as the shopkeeper is, that his children should be dressed as well as 
the shopkeeper's children, and that they should be educated at schools 
of as good a class. The fund to provide for this is the second charge 
on the land — the laborer's wages being the first, and until these first and 
second charges are satisfied the third charge, that of the rent, does not 
arise. 

" Now Irish farmers as a body have hitherto done great wrong, both 
to their families and to themselves, by pitching their scale of living on a 
level wretchedly low, in order to give the bulk of the produce of the land, 
in rent, to heartless and grasping landlords. The farmer's house, as a 
general rule, has been poor and but rudely furnished ; the food upon his 
table has been of the coarsest kind — such indeed as English farmers would 
give their swine ; the clothing of his household has been rough, and worn 
to rags before he would incur the cost of a renewal ; the thought of a 
holiday trip has been outside his imagination, and seldom has it occurred 
to be able to lay by anything for such a trying time as is on him now. 

" All this must be changed entirely for the future. The farmer has as 
good a right to a decent living out of the land as the landlord has to the 
profit known as rent, and we have shown already that the farmer's right 
comes before the right of the landlord. A radical reform will be brought 
about ere long in the Irish farmer's ideas of his right as a skilled and 
valuable member of society ; but at this moment the point before us is 
that the farmer has a right to deduct his share from the produce, and offer 
the balance, if any, to the landlord. This balance is what is justly due 
as rent. The tenants should reserve from the funds in their possession 



238 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

as much as will enable them to live on till the time of a fresh supply, and 
if the landlord will not give them a clear receipt for the balance, we see 
nothing for them to do, if they would save themselves from starving, 
except to make no payment to the landlord. Let him, then, if he will, 
resort to law. It is better to be evicted with a few pounds in one's pocket, 
than evicted without a penny in the world, and to this it would surely 
come with the unfortunate tenant who might render himself a pauper to 
content the landlord now, but would have no chance of paying the next 
gale." 

This reasoning on the part of the Dublin newspaper as to what the 
tenant farmers are entitled to — the second charge on the produce — is very 
pleasing reading for the farmers, but while this holds good in equity, it is 
unfortunate that it conflicts with London-made law, which the British 
sponsors for their own edicts have been and are determined to see 
enforced. 

The word landlord, according to the ethics of the writer in the Weekly 
News, has no meaning ; a man could not be said to own or be in any 
sense lord of his domain if he was only to receive rent after the first two 
charges, as set down in this article, were satisfactorily paid. With respect 
to the first charge, the payment of the laborer's hire, in all probability 
this would be moderate enough ; the farmer would see that no waste in 
sharing the produce would occur in this direction. There are no poorer 
paid, more hard-worked members of the community than the farm laborers 
of Ireland. Now, with respect to the second charge, who is to decide or 
how could it be decided what would be a just recompense for the tenant- 
farmer, conceding all that the Dublin Weekly News states as to the proper 
mode of living for himself and his family ? Conceding to him the right 
which all will cordially endorse, of not only enjoying the necessities, but 
also the comforts of life. Would our friend, the writer in the News, leave 
the farmer to be the judge of what sum he would choose to give to the 
landlord, or if he would give him anything? This, we think, would be 
rather a loose arrangement. Farmers are not more angelic than other 
members of the community, and if such a state of things would be per- 
mitted to work, it is possible the landlord would get nothing. Most 
Irishmen will probably say that the latter mentioned sum is all the land- 
lord is justly entitled to. No one will gainsay that ; but is this not 
peasant proprietary, without paying any sum of money for the land ; and 
is this teaching consistent with moral suasion ? Has it ever entered into 
the brain of the most enthusiastic apostle of the doctrines of peace that 
such a condition of things could be brought about without physical revo- 
lution ? And, yet, such have been the doctrines preached and are still 
preached to Irish farmers by men who are supposed to be capable of 
shaping their country's destinies under the banner of Parliamentary 
agitation. 

But suppose this doctrine had passed from the stage of theory and 
became law ; what if the farmer, after paying the small wages of the 
laborer, and giving nothing to the landlord, what if he could get from 
the proceeds of his toil and unceasing industry barely enough of the 
necessities of life, and would have to ignore the comforts and the proper 
education for his children, and be compelled to send them to schools 
other than those in the mind of the News editorial writer ? and this is so 
in a large number of cases. How fallacious, then, is it for men to say 
that the land question is Ireland's prominent grievance, and to hinge a 
national issue on this agrarian calamity, which would be at once removed 
by a native senate and government ! 

In the dispussion of this great evil, the question of the land, some 



SPREAD OF THE LAND AGITATION. 239 

strange statements were put forth and circulated in the interest of the 
landlords and by their followers. The following extraordinary story was 
printed in the public press at this time : 

" A landlord near Mallow, who made an appointment with his tenants, 
offered them an abatement of fifteen per cent, on their rents due in May 
last, but was met with a refusal to accept it. They felt, they said, that 
thei'r landlord's treatment of them in the past had been kind and con- 
siderate, and that they had been large gainers in prosperous years under 
their arrangement with him. They determined, therefore, that, for the 
first year at least, he should not on their account be a sufferer by the 
existing depression. Several of them in consequence paid their full rent 
on the spot, and the remainder promised to pay theirs by the end of 
November." « 

It is positively refreshing to read about these good, generous tenants, 
and their gratitude to their good landlord ; they actually refused to accept 
a proffered reduction. These must be the class of tenant farmers whom 
the Dublin journalist had in his mind when he wrote about the three 
charges on the land. It makes one feel what a good world it is, and after 
all how much of Utopia there has been in discussing the solution of the 
land question of Ireland on both sides. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

(1879.) 

WILL BRITISH LAND LAWS CREATE IRISH PROSPERITY ? 

Appeal to the Irish Race for Sustainment — Land League Manifesto — Peasant Proprietary 
— Evils of the Land System — Subdivision of Farms — Small Hqldings — Poverty- 
Stricken Occupants — Peasant Proprietary no Remedy under Alien Rule — Reasons 
Why : — Congested Districts — Scene at an English Meeting — Irish Cockney — His 
Patriotism to Ireland — English Farmer — Diversified Industries — Rents in Ireland — 
Fall in Price of Produce — Instances of Subdivision — Speeches of Michael Davitt and 
P. J. Sheridan of Tubbercurry — Fiery Speeches of James Boyce Killen, B. L. — Mr. 
Biggar's Advice to Farmers — London Vanity Fair on the Situation. 

The exertions and superhuman energy of Mr. Parnell was bearing 
fruit so far as Irish organization was concerned. The Land League grew 
rapidly, new branches opening in different parts of the country. An 
appeal to the Irish race for its sustainment, a very big and able document 
on the land evils, soliciting financial aid from Ireland's exiled sons to 
enable the organization to be put into action against the landlords, was 
issued on October 9, 1879 '■> ^ concluded as follows : " In pursuance of 
this intention we issue this appeal to Irishmen the world over, and to 
those who sympathize with the object in view, to aid us in our efforts to 
obtain for our people the possession of an unfettered soil and for Ireland 
the benefits which must result from an unrestricted development of its 
products and resources." 

This appeal was world-wide in its circulation. It was printed in every 
European tongue and spread broadcast in the columns of the public 
press. It was printed and commented on by every Radical and demo- 
cratic journal of the extreme and moderate section of the English repub- 
lican element. What response did it receive from English democrats ? 
Were there any monster meetings of English workingmen ? Were there 
any organized bodies empowered to collect money to aid Mr. Parnell's 
movement ? On the contrary they were actually hostile. These English 
workingmen and Radical republicans were and are more opposed to Ireland 
and Irish interests than even the British aristocrats. This appeal fell 
dead upon English ears, and for aught of effect it had in educating the 
English masses to understand and sympathize with the peasant farmers 
and those who lived by work on the soil of Ireland, it might as well not 
have been written. 

A small band of Britons, the extreme or socialistic element of British 
republicans, who have for leaders Mr. Hyndman, Dr. Clarke, and 
other thinkers of that school, were in sympathy with the Irish movement. 
Whatever assistance the Irish element in England, particularly in London, 
could give the English republicans in swelling their meetings owing to 
the Irish numbers, the British democracy on the other hand (eliminating 
Gladstonians, who are not pure democrats) owing to their small numbers 
could give in return but little assistance. But even these extremists 
would never agree or permit, if they had the power, a separate Irish 
national existence. They wished to leaven the masses of both islands 
with their doctrines, and ignoring nationality bring about what they con- 
sidered a millenium of happiness, which is trying to bring about the con- 

240 



WILL BRITISH LAND LAWS CREATE IRISH PROSPERITY? 241 

federation of mankind. One or two of the Provincialist leaders are 
animated more with these Utopian doctrines than with that of Irish 
self-government. 

A deputation of these republican Britons went to Ireland under the 
guidance and superintendence of the Land League. Their object was 
very laudable — to see the wretched condition of Ireland, and on their 
return to report what they saw to the English masses, trying if possible 
to influence public opinion in favor of Ireland. 

One evening, shortly after their return, at a public meeting of English 
workingmen, among whom were a large sprinkling of Irish, who met 
regularly to debate and discuss current political topics. Dr. Clarke, a 
very able Briton and a liberty-loving man, whose sympathies were and 
are with the Irish, as they were also displayed in favor of the Boers, 
attempted to address the audience. Although a follower of Mr. Glad- 
stone no man could more oppose the tyrannies, despotic acts, and 
inconsistencies of that remarkable statesman. Dr. Clarke had been 
one of the deputation to Ireland, and the wretched misery he saw there 
filled his soul with horror. When he ventured to speak at the meet- 
ing he was snubbed by the chairman and another speaker called 
upon. The hot blood of the Irish present felt this insult and throbbed 
with suppressed indignation. Again Dr. Clarke essayed the attempt 
and was again treated with contempt and refusal to be heard. The 
Irish could stand this treatment of their advocate no longer ; they 
protested against this partisan treatment of Dr. Clarke. The chairman 
threatened expulsion, and the English workingmen howled with indigna- 
tion and shouted " Put out the Irishmen." The Irish blood was up and 
would not be silenced. John Bull could not control them. The few 
who at first resisted the chairman's arbitrary ruling were quickly re-en- 
forced by Irishmen in different parts of the room, born in London and 
speaking a pure cockney accent ; but the blood of the " O's " and " Macs " 
coursed in their veins, their foreign birth and accent did not change their 
love of Ireland. The English workingmen would not hear Dr. Clarke 
and the Irish would not hear their speakers, so the meeting was broken 
up, and on adjourning outside the Irish Cockneys gave three cheers" For 
Hold Hireland" with as much ardor as if they were born at the foot of 
Slievnamon. 

Mr. Parnell's appeal met with a different reception from the exiled 
Gael, and money flowed into the Land League treasury in thousands of 
pounds. And what has it done for the farmers ? True, they can take 
consolation in the knowledge that their enemies are suffering as well as 
themselves. But of what advantage is this to the public good ? Is it not 
like the old phrase "cutting off your nose to spite your face"? The 
land is lying idle, and farms instead of being cropped* and adding to the 
national wealth are lying fallow. Reclaimed lands and partly reclaimed 
ground is going back into its original state of sterility, while poverty, 
coercion, and suffering stalk abroad. Could Ireland's material wants 
be satisfied by land legislation alone ? No ! emphatically no ! In 
Ireland at this time there were 600,000 tenant farmers ; only 10,000 of 
these paid above ^100 ($500) yearly for their farms, only 30,000 above 
^■50 ($250) a year, and 217,000 under £§ a year — under $40 yearly. 
With the exception of the 10,000 farmers mentioned in the first category 
the remaining 550,000 could not live comfortably if they even were made 
a present of their farms, and as to the 217,000 who pay from $5 to $40 a 
year, their case is one of perpetual poverty, which even a revolution in the 
land laws of the most drastic kind could not elevate out of their wretched 
condition. Although the landlords have contributed to make Ireland 
suffer many calamities, her destroyer is not landlordism but alien rule. 



242 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The English farmer lives under the same land laws and there is no such 
poverty with him ; on the contrary the English farmer is a well-to-do, 
comfortable man, who not only enjoys the necessities, but the comforts of 
life. How comes this? The English farmer is not absolutely depending 
on the land. He farms largely, and if he cannot meet his liabilities he 
throws up the business and enters another, for England is filled with 
diversity of industries. There the landlord will at once reduce the 
rent and voluntarily, for if the value of produce depreciates he knows he 
must bear his share of the loss, or he will have his farm on his hands, 
for England is not cursed with the misfortune of being an agricultural 
country. No ! her wealth lies in her many and various industries, in her 
manufactures, trade, and commerce. Self-government alone could give 
Ireland these. 

People will probably say that this is too difficult of attainment, that 
the people would starve while they were waiting for self-government, and 
that something in this acute crisis was necessary. Certainly, but this 
was a case of creating a charitable fund, which was done, but Mr. 
Parnell wanted and got huge sums to establish a gigantic organization to 
repeal the infamous land code, which so many suffered under, and which 
if repealed could not in the nature of things do anything like the good 
for Ireland intended, as already pointed out. But so long as Irishmen 
have British rule in Ireland so long will these land laws remain practically 
unchanged, for even if the tenant farmer were to be made owner of his 
holding, it could only be by paying for a greater length of time than 
the present generation can expect to live through, large sums yearly to 
pay back the purchase ; and this drain, particularly if he finds produce 
still further reducing, will leave him very little better off. It means 
simply a little less starvation ; as for the 217,000 whose rent varies from 
$5 to $40 yearly and another 200,000 whose small farms are not much 
above these in value it is sheer folly, the very height of absurdity, to say 
that even if these people got their farms free — which would be an 
impossibility — that they could live comfortably. Mr. Parnell has sug- 
gested migration, removing the people from certain districts to others. 
But supposing that Ireland was parceled out into equal proportions and 
given to the tenant farmers, how long would this condition of things last ? 
A farmer should provide for his sons and daughters and the land would 
again be divided, and sub-divided, poverty would ensue, and next emi- 
gration, so the last state of Ireland would be as the first. Ireland needs 
native government. The only union she requires is the union of Ulster, 
Munster, Leinster, and Connaught. 

With respect to what was said about the suffering of the land- 
lords, Irish farmers should not put too much confidence in being 
able to turn the loss of the landlords into a gain for their own just 
demands. Their leaders have been and are pointing out this as a 
subject not only of consolation in trouble but also a hope that they must 
succumb to the necessities of their position. Like many statements set 
forth on this land question, this one has been exaggerated. The Irish 
landlord who suffers through not receiving his rent, belongs to a class 
who own but a small proportion of the land of Ireland. The great 
landowners, who are the lords of the greater portion of the Irish soil, 
either have large English estates, or they own mines, or are embarked in 
commerce, have railroad stock and other shares, and can enjoy life's 
pleasures without even their Irish rent roll. But although this rent roll 
is seriously crippled by the fall in prices as well as the agitation, as long 
as Britain's flag flies over Irish soil every inch it covers must eventually 
pay this tribute. This agitation claims to have been successful in reduc- 
ing the farmer's rents. This is not so ; the fall in the price of produce 



WILL BRITISH LAND LAWS CREATE IRISH PROSPERITY? 243 

compelled this reduction. In England the reduction has been greater 
without any public agitation, and here it should be stated this apparent 
concession is in reality no concession at all. If produce has fallen fifty per 
cent, in value, as the Irish farmer and his advocate tell us, what relief can 
it be to the farmer if his rent is reduced even forty percent.? In all cases 
of rent reduction it has never met the actual reductions in prices, and 
as to putting a rent upon the land that would enable the farmer to live 
comfortably, in the great majority of cases it should be no rent what- 
ever, and even this as already stated could not accomplish more than 
giving the farmer and his family sustenance. There is no hope for Ire- 
land but self-government, by which employment can be given the people 
and so remove them from off the land that at present is in a state of con- 
gestion with small poverty-stricken holdings. 

To illustrate what the absence of native government and consequent 
absence of manufactures does in affecting this land question, for instance — 
some cases which have occurred in Ireland in respect to this enforced 
tendency to subdivision of farms : 

Many years ago several generations back, a landlord, whom Mr. Shaw 
would call a good landlord, leased fifty-five farms at what was considered 
then — and would much more deserve that title now — low head rents. These 
leases were forever. They were given to the fifty-five tenants then occupy- 
ing the farms, so that practically they became peasant proprietors. 
What was the condition of these farms at the opening of this great land 
agitation ? 

Two remained intact in the possession of the descendants of the 
original lessees, three others were still in the hands of descendants, but 
miserably subdivided into small lots ; one farm was partly held by the 
descendant, partly by poor wretched squatters, his undertenants. The 
remaining forty-nine farms had entirely changed hands — many as the 
result of mortgages — and were then held by middlemen, who had por- 
tioned out the lands (in some instances to descendants of the original 
lessee) to a miserable poor class of undertenants. 

These lands were all subdivided, one farm of ninety acres being then 
occupied by fifty families, holding down to an acre and a half. 

What a miserable fallacy to say that these poor people, who are at 
least 550,000 out of the 600,000 tenant farmers of Ireland, could live 
comfortably, if they even got their farms free. Their normal condition is 
one of semi-starvation and hard, laborious toil, which landlords of them- 
selves cannot remove. The evil lies deeper ; it is in the cause of foreign 
rule and the absence of that healthy public spirit which would spring 
from national independence. When that time comes, if it should come, 
the anvil, the loom, and the whirr of machinery will be heard over the 
land, the agricultural community could get employment elsewhere in 
Ireland at various industries, farms could be so managed that the farmer 
would be enabled to develop the resources of the magnificent soil that is 
now becoming fallow, and by scientific farming increase the produce of 
Ireland twofold. Large farms would be needed to obtain these results. 
Manufactures, trade, commerce, and the many various pursuits of life 
could give ample room for the surplus agricultural population. Then 
and then only could occupying proprietary become a blessing, and it 
would be at once established by a native senate, not a sham, as Mr. Glad- 
stone proffered, but a genuine legislature, having power to make laws for 
the whole people and for every want and necessity of their existence. 

Yet another case of this tendency to subdivision of farms will be 
cited here. 

On the lands purchased from sales made by the Church Commis- 
sioners to occupying tenants, a farmer who purchased his holding, a 



244 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

shrewd, intelligent member of his class, died shortly after completing his 
purchase. By his will he divided his twenty acres of freehold land, leav- 
ing one moiety to his eldest son, and the other to his widow for life, and 
after her death to his second son. Will not the lapse of another genera- 
tion multiply the occupants of this small farm and the sequel be 
wretched poverty ? 

No wonder General Gordon — afterward killed at Khartoum — said, 
after traveling through Ireland, he had not witnessed even in the most 
savage regions of the earth, in the wildest and poorest places he had 
traversed, anything to come near the squalid poverty, the rags, the 
famine-pinched, hungry faces, and the miserable hovels or cabins that he 
witnessed in Ireland. Now the Provincialist press cry out " The land- 
lords," ignoring the landlord's creators and masters, the British Govern- 
ment. Landlordism is but one of the fingers of the bandit's hand that 
holds the country clutched by the throat. Agitators are vainly trying to 
remove this finger, forgetting that if even they were successful the remain- 
ing four fingers would retain their clutch. Why not cut the wrist ? The 
wrist ! the wrist ! there is the vulnerable part of his anatomy. In God's 
name cease this babbling, and out with your falchions and sever tendons 
and muscles and stand erect as freemen in the land God gave your 
fathers ! 

On November 3, 1879, was held the memorable land meeting at 
Gurteen, County Sligo. From this meeting came the first arrests for the 
use of what the enemy called "seditious language." 

Numerous contingents came in from the surrounding country — Boyle, 
Ballymote, Tubbercurry, Carrick-on-Shannon,' Kilkee, and Ballagha- 
derin. They were accompanied by bands and carried banners. Among 
the mottoes displayed were, "Irish Lands in Irish Hands," " Remember 
'47," "God Save Ireland," "Faith and Fatherland," "The Land for the 
Tillers," " Down with the Land Robbers ! " 

Rev. Canon James McDermot, P. P., proposed the first resolution, 
which was seconded by Mr. John O'Connor of Dublin. Rev. Dennis 
O'Hara moved a resolution in favor of peasant proprietory. Mr. 
Davitt spoke, and was followed by Mr. P. J. Sheridan of Tubbercurry, 
who publicly burnt a local paper, which described the attendance on the 
platform at the Tubbercurry meeting as characterized by fustian and 
vulgarity. 

Mr. J. B. Killen, barrister, said, since the time when the cursed feudal 
laws were introduced by Norman savages the land of Ireland had been 
three times confiscated, but always in favor of the aristocracy. They 
wanted a fourth confiscation, or rather restitution, now in favor of the 
people. He left them to say whether that was to be done by the pen, 
the pencil, or the sword. The time for namby-pamby speaking had 
passed ; they had been beggars long enough, and now they must be men, 
and, acting like men, the day would be won. 

That night there were great rejoicing bonfires lit on several hills 
about Gurteen and Boyle. The misguided people were filled with the 
day's oratory and its false teaching, and felt as if they were victors in a 
great battle, and that England had surrendered her power to the witch- 
ing influence of the silver-tongued speakers whom they had heard that 
day. 

Mr. Biggar, M. P., at a conference in Dublin, expressed it as his 
belief that the only panacea is to buy out the land. If the landlords 
refused the reasonable and fair concession now asked for, they might 
have to suffer a great deal, because ultimately a bloody revolution might 
take place in the kingdom and the land might be taken entirely from the 
landlords, as it was in France. 



WILL BRITISH LAND LAWS CREATE IRISH PROSPERITY? 245 

A leading London society paper, Vanity Fair, of October 11, 1879, 
thus commented on the Irish anti-rent agitation : 

" It is worse than useless to blind ourselves to the fact that serious 
difficulties are likely to arise in Ireland. We read of threats used to 
hitherto popular landlords — landlords in connection with whom it is 
absurd to talk of rack-renting or injustice ; of violent language at meetings 
by priests, of wholesale refusal to pay rents at all, and of arrangements for 
a more thorough agitation through the winter. The most caustic or the 
most convincing leaders in the London press will do nothing to avert the 
state of anarchy which is fast approaching. When will it be time for 
'something to be done'? When how many landlords and agents have 
been shot ? How far are Mr. Parnell and his followers to go? If a man 
goes into the street and creates a disturbance, he is held responsible for 
the disturbance. Mr. Parnell is preaching doctrines that can only end in 
bloodshed. Will he not be held responsible for the bloodshed ? It is 
useless for him to say that by standing together and his other phrases, he 
means resistance by legal means. To advise a man to stay in another 
man's house, refusing either to pay rent or to go, is to advise him deliber- 
ately to break the law. It may be right that the land of Ireland should 
be taken from the present landlords and given to the present tenants. 
But until it is so taken the tenants must wait for possession." 

In this article the hard-headed practical English enemy calmly dis- 
cusses the situation from his standpoint, and indeed from the common- 
sense standpoint. He naturally thought that the Irish people were pre- 
paring to fight. The natural sequence of the doctrines preached ought 
as necessarily to end in bloodshed as the doctrines which the French and 
German people differ about as to Alsace and Lorraine must end in blood- 
shed some day. But mercurial as our French brethren are, or are said to 
be, they never yet promulgated the absurd idea of getting back Alsace 
and Lorrain without fighting for it. They would consider, and justly so, 
any set of men lunatics, who would dictate to the Alsatians and Lorrainers 
how they were to break German laws, admitting them to be as unjust as 
these in Ireland, and to tell these people that they must be victorious for 
their German democratic brothers would sympathize with them. And 
then to turn round to their French countrymen and tell them and in tell- 
ing them tell the world that the German army is all powerful, and the 
French all powerless, and that it would be destruction and rashness to 
attempt to cross arms with Germany, but they were to get Alsace and 
Lorraine without fighting. This is the very doctrine that Irishmen have 
been and are to-day preaching to their felfow countrymen, announcing from 
the hilltops Ireland's weakness, and her utter inability to fight, but if 
they could have the least chance, what mince-meat these valiant heroes 
would make of the Saxon ! The doctrines that are to-day preached to a 
brave but uneducated people (in a political sense uneducated, as are 
the masses of many nations), are enough to sap the manhood of the race. 
It is teaching the young men to look to their foe, the bitter hostile enemy 
of seven hundred years, for that gift of freedom which Britain robbed from 
their fathers. The English writer in Vanity Fair says, It may be 
right to take from the landlords the land and give it to the tenant, but 
the tenant must wait for' possession until it is so taken. But not so 
say the agitators, who, with possibly good motives, advise the Irish ten- 
ant farmers what to do as if they were the actual possessors of the soil,, 
without striking one single blow or firing a single shot. They forget 
England's flag still floats over the la.nd, emblem of the conquest she has 
not yet completed. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 
(1879.) 

SHADOW OF APPROACHING FAMINE. 

Balla Proclamation — Protest of Home Rule Executive against the Arrests — Imposing Dis- 
play in Balla — Military Discipline — Balla Demonstration — Speech of Mr. Thomas 
Brennan — Speech of Parnell — Proclamation — "Ready" — Speech of Mr. Lynch of 
Elphin — The Three Islands — Bonfires for Davitt's Release — Arrest of Thomas Bren- 
nan — The Dublin Freeman on the Arrests — Constitutional Agitation — British Opinion 
on the Approach of Famine — The Work of Agitators — Starch Manufactory — Duchess 
of Marlborough's Fund — Subscriptions from the Queen and Prince of Wales — Mr. 
Gladstone and Mr. Foster — Ireland a Mendicant — Departure of Mr. Parnell, Mr. 
John Dillon, and Mr. Tim Healy for America. 

The agitation was now in full active work. The great meetings of 
O'Connell were nearly equaled by the giant meetings of Parnell, and 
Ireland, after the loss of over three millions of people, since the great 
tribune's time, as pluckily faced the British, determined to argue the point 
with him. But the British gets tired discussing the issue, and having 
force ready at his hand, he tries what imprisonment can do to solve the 
question from his view of the needs of the case. The British opened the 
ball and, as the papers in the English interest said, the long expected blow 
was struck at seditious agitation. At six o'clock on the morning of Novem- 
ber 19, 1S79, they arrested Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. James Bryce Killen 
on a charge of having used seditious language at the anti-rent meeting 
in Gurteen, County Sligo, on Sunday, November 2. At the same hour 
Mr. James Daly, proprietor of the Mayo Telgraph, was arrested in 
Castlereigh. Messrs. Davitt and Killen were conveyed by nine o'clock 
train to Sligo, and Mr. Daly was also brought there, and having been 
charged before the magistrate, they were remanded for further examina- 
tion and committed to prison. 

The following placard posted throughout the County Mayo was torn 
down by the police. 

" Fellow countrymen : The hour of trial is come. Your leaders are 
arrested. Davitt and Daly are in prison. You know your duty. Will 
you do it? Yes, you will. Balla is the place of meeting and Saturday is 
the day. Come in your thousands and show the Government and the 
world that your rights you'll maintain. To the rescue in the mightiness 
of your numbers. Land and Liberty ! ' God save the people ' Balla, 
Balla ! Saturday next, Saturday next ! " 

What arrant nonsense is contained in this placard ! Irishmen are sum- 
moned to go to Balla on Saturday in their thousands to show the British 
that their rights they will maintain, by so doing they show the British the 
very opposite — that their rights they will not maintain except to shout and 
cheer. 

James Grant, the Scottish writer, in one of his works, gives a reason 
why the British soldier is clad in scarlet ; he tells his readers that a charge 
of British infantry, as the sun shines on the bright-colored dress and 
glistens on their accouterments, the steel of their bayonets flashing in the 
sunlight so frightens their enemy that he gets panic stricken at their mere 
appearance and flies in disorder, terrified at the martial sight. 

It must be some such idea that animated the writer of the Balla placard. 

246 



SHADOW OF APPROACHING FAMINE. 247 

He held his countrymen in such high esteem that the mere gathering 
at a public meeting in their thousands would release Davitt, Daly, and 
Killen, as announced in the placard, " To the rescue in the mightiness of 
your numbers." 

The Home Rule Executive, in their rooms at London Bridge, also 
came to the rescue in the same daring manner. Resolutions condemning 
the British Ministry were passed which must have seriously incon- 
venienced these English statesmen ! 

On Saturday, November 22, 1879, the great Balla demonstration took 
place ; on the same day the Nationalists turned out to celebrate the anni- 
versary of the men who were hanged at Manchester for the rescue of 
Colonel Kelly and Captain Dacey. These were all trained and well-drilled 
men who were foolishly ordered out to display their strength to the enemy. 
Splendid material, but lacking brains to guide them in the proper course. 

At two o'clock the procession formed in the Claremorris road. The 
English writer who described the scene was evidently impressed with 
the marching and discipline of the Nationalists : 

" The contingents fell into their places with the regularity and order 
of a disciplined force, and defiled through the town in semi-military array; 
each contingent marched four deep under its own officers in the style of 
men accustomed to step together, and obeyed their orders with a promp- 
titude and precision which would have reflected credit on regiments of 
militia. They were all under the command of an imposing looking 
person, well mounted and distinguished by a red band round his hat. 
In the several files, thick blackthorn sticks were carried over the shoulder 
like guns, and the strictest silence was observed in the ranks. Behind 
the field officer in command, as he may be called, was a bugler who 
sounded the orders to ' halt,' ' fall in ' and 'fall out ' with the facility of 
a trained hand. In front of the procession was borne on two poles a 
large black banner with white fringe, with inscriptions in white letters — 
on one side ' God rest our martyred three,' and on the other ' In 
memoriam — Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien,' with a cross underneath. In 
the center of the procession a green flag was carried, having in gilt 
letters on one side, 

" On in your masses — dense, resolute, strong, 
To war against treason, oppression, and wrong, 

and on the other side, 

" God Save Ireland. 

" Green scarves were worn by the processionists, and about fifty men 
carried little bannerets of bright colors which fluttered in the air with 
picturesque effect. Then from two hundred to three hundred men, 
mounted on fine horses, brought up the rear of the procession. These 
horsemen kept the same military order as did the footmen." 

On the platform were assembled the leading Provincialists, including 
Mr. Parnell. There were also a few Nationalists in the group. Several 
resolutions were put to the meeting and carried. Mr. Thomas Brennan, 
now an enforced exile in the United States, in seconding the first reso- 
lution, delivered the following able address : 

They were there for a threefold purpose to protest against eviction 
and possible death of nine of God's creatures ; to protest against the 
unconstitutional arrest of their leaders, and to declare their determination 
to go on with the movement until victory was secured ; until the last 
trace of feudal landlordism was swept from the country. The English 
Government was coming to the rescue of the accursed institution, but 



248 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

it could not be saved. The crumbling edifice must fall. He for one was 
not there to withdraw aught he had ever said. Whatever might have 
been the words used by Mr. Davitt at the Gurteen meeting, he adopted 
them, and if he knew them he would repeat them, for he believed in 
his soul they were the words of justice and of truth. The time for 
mere speeching had gone by and the time for the resolve and the act had 
arrived. The speech that day was the indignation he saw flash from their 
eyes and the determination which rested upon their brows. Let them 
think of the possible scene they might have had to witness with the 
persons lying ill with fever and the poor child who every time he asked 
for a morsel of bread to eat, a pang worse than a bayonet shot through 
its mother's heart ; let them think of that and then of the evictor. He 
had fled from the country that his ears might not catch the execration of 
the people. Let them think of him as he enjoyed the luxuries of life and 
pocketed the money which the sweat of the poor man had wrought from 
the land, for in this enlightened nineteenth century, God's first decree to 
fallen man was contradicted by human hand, and the majority of mankind 
must work and toil to support the few in idleness. He appealed 
to one class of the community, the men of the Royal Irish Constabulary, 
and he asked them if they were content to remain the destroyers of 
their own people and of their own kith and kin ? Let them look at the 
possible picture — the dear brother lying in yonder ditch dead and naked, 
the last garment sold to buy a measure of milk for the poor child in whose 
body the tooth of the lean dog was now fastened. Ah! men, are you 
human ? Can you look upon such scenes, and strong men as you are, do 
not feel your knees tremble, and is there not a curse gathering in your 
throats ? Need he remind them of 1847, when they were called upon to 
do some work like that with which they were now threatened, when one of 
the force fired upon an unoffending crowd and found a few minutes 
later that the bullet had lodged in the breast of the mother that bore him. 
They were Irishmen, and he doubted not that beneath the policeman's 
jacket a warm Irish heart beat. To the people he said, Pay no rent 
until you get a reasonable reduction, and till no land from which another 
has been evicted. If there is found wretch enough to do so, mark him 
well and cast him out as an unclean thing ! 

Mr. Parnell, who was warmly greeted, said that after the magnificent 
•speech they had heard, it would ill become him to occupy their time. 
They had showed by coming there in the face of intimidation that calm 
■determination to do their duty by their suffering fellow-creatures. He 
^had alluded to Mr. Brennan's magnificent speech, but it was too true 
-that in these days the most talented men were marked out for imprison- 
ment, and he very much feared that the result of the lead he had taken 
; in this movement would be that he also would be sent to share the fate 
of Messrs. Davitt, Daly, and Killen. Lord Beaconsfield had shown him 
how he could appreciate the strength of this movement. Too well the 
aristocracy of England and Ireland also recognized it, and the movement 
which began in the plains of Irishtown, Mayo, had set the handwriting 
on the wall for the downfall of the most infamous land tenure that the 
world had ever seen. 

The Charles Stewart Parnell of that Balla meeting was a pure and 
sincere Irishman. A man who was fast forming his mind upon the solu- 
tion of the Irish nation's troubles, and their removal, by association with 
the Nationalists, whom he to-day slanderously denounces ; true, at that 
time he clung to Provincialism, but he had promised Irishmen that if it 
failed he would be with them in anything. Believing in his promise, the 
party of action helped him, and the huge League was the result of their 



SHADOW OF APPROACHING FAMINE. 249 

labors. In America they formed branches outside of their revolutionary 
work to collect money to build up the movement, which made Mr. Par- 
nell and his followers so numerous before the world at this date. These 
men did not believe in agitation, and their speeches on public platforms did 
not convey their real sentiments, but by what they considered diplomatic 
tactics, they hoped to ripen the Irish question by the agitation and behind 
it strike at the foe. Mr. Parnell, they believed, would be with them 
when the hour came. He believing that what Ireland required could be 
got peacefully, yet if not so, and that it was proven different, his remarks 
and associations would lead his most intimate friends to believe that he 
would assume the role of the leaders of '98, Fitzgerald, Emmet, and 
Tone. Each party deceived the other and both parties deceived the peo- 
ple, not intentionally, for neither stopped to examine what this false teach- 
ing was sure to lead to. The moderate movement crossed the Rubicon — 
possibly driven there by passion and not judgment — and when they did 
so became more extreme in their acts than the party of action had hitherto 
been. But victory had no sooner fallen to their flag than they grew 
alarmed. They were not equal to the emergency ; they precipitately 
retreated, threw down their arms, and left the brave men alone in the 
gap to face all the dangers. They even deceived these men, for they kept 
their camp fires burning as if they still occupied the same advanced 
ground. Not content at this foul desertion in a crisis, they started a 
propaganda of slander, and denounced the men and their actions, whom 
they so basely betrayed. Some men condoned this as a proper and 
necessary feature to deceive the enemy. What fatuous reasoning! 
These men have befouled their own conduct. They would no doubt 
swear a thousand oaths that they had no association with what their 
movement was the actual founders of, and this hateful perjury and 
prevarication is called by these men diplomacy. 

Mr. Parnell that day had not experienced imprisonment — and as Mr. 
Hyndman, the great English democrat, once said in the writer's hearing, 
" No man can tell what effect the salutary lesson might not have upon him." 
The eminent English republican leader could scarcely repress the sneer 
of contempt he felt for Mr. Parnell's change of front and his Kilmain- 
ham treaty surrender. But that day at Balla Mr. Parnell defied arrest. 
He was then sincere and faithful ; the man he praised was a stanch 
patriot, Mr. Thomas Brennan, who was afterward compelled, when Carey 
turne informer, to fly to this free country. Mr. Parnell's alliance with 
the excoercer, the enemy's Minister, Mr. Gladstone, and his denunciation 
of the national feeling held by Mr. Brennan and so many brave Irishmen, 
was then in the womb of time. On the morning of the Balla meeting a 
placard was posted up in different parts of the locality, but was quickly 
torn down by the police. It read as follows : 

" TO THE IRISH PEOPLE. 

" Irishmen ! — does one spark of manliness remain in you ? If so, up 
forvengence and right! You have seen a terrible wrong committed at 
your door. The innocent who pleaded for your freedom and your land 
thrown untried into a British dungeon. Will you stand it ? Will you, 
the sons of brave sires, sit tamely by and see this system of tyranny and 
wrong extended ? Never ! Up, then, and demand the freedom of your 
leaders— your benefactors — who have manfully pleaded your cause. 

(Signed) " ' Ready ! '" 

The promoters of the great Balla meeting, which was made more 
imposing by having the Manchester martyrs' procession added, had one 
particular object in view, and that was to protest against the eviction of 



250 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the Dempseys, a family of nine people ; the meeting as recorded was 
held, the protest was made, but the evictions took place notwithstanding. 
Another meeting was called to assemble at Carrick-on-Shannon to pro- 
test against the evictions having taken place. The case of Micawber 
satisfying himself his debts were paid when he tendered his creditors an 
I. O. U. is illustrative of this particular phase which the Irish people have 
been taught and believe in. This thinking they do their duty by their 
country by simply protesting against wrong is worse than folly ; it is 
destructive of national life and tends to destroy national hope. 

The meeting at Carrick-on-Shannon was attended by over 5000 
people, who protested very loudly, cheering the resolutions which were 
read and endorsed with great applause, and when the meeting broke up 
and the people scattered to their homes they felt satisfied they had done 
some good for their country, and that by attending a public meeting to 
applaud speakers they had discharged a duty they owed their suffering 
nation. God help the Irish people ! they have been and are still taught 
to pursue this silly work. Among the many speeches delivered that day 
in Carrick was one remarkable address, but quite representative of the 
better class of farmers' views on national questions — the people whom 
we are told will help on the struggle for " Home Rule " if the rest of 
Ireland can get them free land. Mr. Lynch of Elphin, in seconding a 
resolution, said in the course of a rambling speech : 

" Queen Victoria is one of the greatest monarchs that has ever been 
on the English throne since the time of Alfred the Great, and were she 
to come over she would receive a Cead Mille." (Cries of " No, no ; speak 
to the resolution.") " Her Gracious Majesty is not the maker of the laws." 
(A voice, "Tenant right and Home Rule." Cheers for Parnell.) "Ire- 
land is part and parcel of the British empire. Nature evidently intended 
the three islands to be one." (Cries of " Never, never. You put your 
foot in it.") 

The unemancipated farmer was a bad advocate for the alien connec- 
tion. The cry England, Ireland, and Scotland had got so fixed in the 
good gentleman's head that he considered there were three islands instead 
of two. Mr. Lynch is not the only speaker who falls into this error ; 
they forget that Scotland and England bear the same relation to each 
other in the island of Britain as Ulster and Munster does in the neigh- 
boring island of Ireland. The north and south of two separate and 
distinct nations. 

The magisterial investigation into the charges made against Messrs. 
Davitt, Daly, and Killen commenced Monday, November 24, at Sligo. 
They were met by Mr. Parnell, M. P., Mr. Dillon, and other gentlemen, 
and appeared none the worse for their confinement. Mr. Daly was 
first put on his trial ; he was defended by Mr. John J. Loudon. Mr. 
Daly was committed for trial at the ensuing assizes, the magistrate agree- 
ing to take bail, two sureties in ^250 each, and the prisoner, Mr. Daly, 
in ^500 ; bail was procured and Mr. Daly was released. Mr. Davitt, 
who refused professional assistance, defended himself ; he was put on his 
trial the next day, when the stenographer or short hand writer, Mr. William 
C. Johnson, on the staff of the Dublin Daily Express, gave evidence of 
the Gurteen speech. He was released on similar bail to that given by 
Mr. Daly. 

After Mr. Davitt was released a large tar-barrel was set on fire 
opposite the house of Dr. Cox, where he was dining. A crowd assembled 
before the house and called for speeches. They were addressed by 
Messrs. Davitt, Parnell, Dillon, and Loudon. Mr. Parnell said the 
Government had overshot the mark in releasing Davitt on a ticket of 
leave as an ordinary felon instead of a political convict. Mr. Dillon said 



SHADOW OF APPROACHING FAMINE. 



2 5* 



the Government made no greater mistake than arresting Mr. Davitt. 
Mr. Loudon said that he regarded the action of the Government as a 
sublime joke in a serio-comic drama which will only bring shame and 
disgrace upon them. 

Mr. Parnell, it may be presumed, meant that the Government's mis- 
take in not releasing Davitt as a political prisoner prevented them from 
re-arresting him on the former political charge, hence the necessity of a 
fresh prosecution. Mr. Parnell, like a good many of the agitators, clung 
to the belief that the British respect the forms of their own laws in dealing 
with Irishmen. This may be said to a certain extent of the Tories, but 
never of the Radicals, Ireland's most bitter foes with honeyed tongues. 
Mr. Parnell lived to see the violation of this form when the Liberal, Mr. 
Gladstone, revoked Mr. Davitt's ticket of leave and had him re-arrested 
and sent to Woking convict prison. Mr. Dillon said the Government 
made no greater mistake than these arrests. From Ireland's stand- 
point — yes ! The Germans made no greater mistake than capturing 
the French army at Sedan, that is, from a French point of view. Irishmen 
read these statements almost daily and of the dire consequences which 
must overtake the enemy's Government if they proclaim a certain meeting 
or make certain arrests, and the strangest part of these strange assertions 
consists in the wild statement that the injuries are to come from the 
English people — the people who elected this Government to carry out 
the programme of which these men complain. 

Yet men of Mr. Dillon's caliber will tell their countrymen such 
puerilities in sober seriousness. Then take this burning of a tar-barrel 
because a countryman is sent for trial for making a speech. What 
strange victories ! Mr. Loudon's title of serio-comic suits the whole 
situation. 

Mr. Thomas Brennan also fell a victim to Lord Beaconsfield's admin- 
istration. The Tory chief ordered his arrest for the Balla speech. He 
was made prisoner on December 5 in his own house at Russell Street, 
Dublin, at eight o'clock in the morning, and taken in a cab to Broadstone 
Railway terminus, thence by the nine o'clock train to Castlebar. He 
was brought before the magistrate at Castlebar, who remanded him on 
bail. 

The Freeman's Journal, commenting on the arrests, observed that 
constitutional agitation forms the armory of the people, and the keenest 
and most potent weapon in its case stands freedom of speech. Of the 
general constitutional character of the land agitation, it did not believe 
that any questions were raised. It was similar to that which preceded 
the land bill of 1870. 

Constitutional agitation is a potent weapon in a self-governed com- 
munity which, if it is not satisfied with its government, can remove 
it by its votes cast at the ballot box. But in the case of a con- 
quered and invaded nation it is rank folly to speak of such a procedure. 
The writer in the Freeman calls the land movement "constitutional 
agitation." There exists no Irish constitution. The constitution which 
the people of the island of Britain live under was not constituted by 
the Irish people any more than the French constitution was created by 
them. They have neither voice nor influence in shaping the laws of that 
British constitution. Whatever the dominant party of Britons, Tories or 
Radicals, wish, the Irish must either submit to or resort to force. What- 
ever blessings are to be found in that constitution are not extended to 
Ireland. They are violated and suppressed by special legislation and, 
even apart from these laws of special coercion, the constitution becomes 
inoperative in the very nature of things. It was created for the happi- 
ness and well being of the inhabitants of the island of Britain, and was 



252 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

not intended nor would it suit the inhabitants of the island of Ireland. 
It is intended to develop the trade, commerce, wealth, and prosperity of 
the British isle, and not to develop, but to extract all the wealth and pro- 
duce of the Irish isle, as Britain does in India and other Crown colonies 
for the greater aggrandizement and pleasure of the islanders who framed 
this constitution, and alter it at their own wish and convenience. It can 
no more feed, enrich, or invigorate the people of the western island than 
can the food that one man takes into his system make healthy and robust 
a different organism. The medicine which maketh the Briton healthy 
would make sick the Irish Celt. We Irish have no constitution, unless 
handcuffs, bayonets, buckshot, bullets, the dungeon, and the scaffold. 
These are the legal weapons used by the invader to keep the Irish quiet 
while he methodically and systematically plunders them of everything 
they produce which can benefit him in any manner. One other constitu- 
tional blessing has the Briton conferred upon the Irishmen. He has 
given them from time to time silver-tongued British statesmen, who 
deplore with crocodile tears the sorrows which Ireland has suffered by 
British connection, but who would not sever that connection, though 
they keep on deluding the infatuated Irish who listen to these serpent 
woers — they who breathe upon a mirror, and then trace upon the vapor 
that dims the brightness of the glass their vows of service, vows which 
fade as quickly as they are made. These serve the purpose of attracting 
the Irish gaze and distract the national thought of the masses, while 
Britain's work of destruction goes on and the people are passing away 
from the Green Isle. Year by year they leave her shores and the emerald 
gem of the Western ocean is fast becoming a foreigner's farm, while her 
drugged people listen to the flageolet notes of the orator and dreamily 
utter the mocking parrot cry " Constitutional agitation." The Freeman 
speaks of the Land Bill of 1870 as a measure accepted by the Irish 
people, as a concession to the farmers, but not as a finality in land legis- 
lation, which was the reason for another Land Bill. The plea for all 
these frequent measures is that, although not fully settling the question, 
they do a little good. More of the fallacy of this so-called " Consti- 
tutional agitation." None of these measures can or ever had any 
effect on Irish wealth or Irish farmers. They no more affect the pros- 
perity of Ireland than they change the mountains in the moon. There 
is no "little " in all these visionary laws for which Irishmen are agitating. 
They were at this time looking for " Fixity of tenure." They have it now 
nearly seven years, and there is no more substance in it than the soap 
bubble which reflects the tints of light in the beauty of the sunshine, but 
disappears in the grasp. You cannot get any law that will give you the 
" half loaf " you are so anxious to accept. No, not even a slice of material 
prosperity, or less still, not a single crumb. The most powerful micro- 
scope ever manufactured could not magnify the fruits of British legisla- 
tion for Ireland into an infinitesimal atom of nutriment. There is but 
one thing the British Parliament can do — which it will not unless com- 
pelled — and that is to remove itself and all its belongings from Ireland, 
and let that nation remain outside the sphere of its operations. Any 
other measure which passes its portals for Ireland can have no more 
power to stop national death, than looking at a Punch and Judy show can 
satisfy the cravings of a hungry man. 

The Daily Express, the Orange Castle mouthpiece, said that for the 
last three months the public had looked on with amazement at the for- 
bearance displayed by the Government. Day after day seditious language 
had been used, the law had been openly set at defiance and an attempt 
made by revolutionary means to wrest the land from the rightful owners. 

The British in Ireland and in their own country tried to make it 



SHADOW OF APPROACHING FAMINE. 253 

appear that the distress and threatened famine was the creation of Mr. 
Parnell for political effect. Their organs preached up the " selfish agita- 
tors " who were disturbing the island, and denounced in no measured 
language the demagogues who were disturbing the peace of the country 
and preventing the flow of English capital coming into Ireland. 

This cry about frightening away capital has been often and often 
repeated whenever the suffering Irish make any protest and fancy by 
such means to lighten their intolerable burdens. Ireland needs no capital 
from England ; if Britain would only take her hands out of Ireland's 
pocket, the Irish would have ample capital to begin housekeeping for 
themselves. It is not agitation which frightens away the investing of 
capital, but the monopoly England enjoys through her specially manu- 
factured laws. 

Some few years ago under the influence of the cry Native Manufac- 
tures, then prevalent, two young Irishmen started a starch factory. 
People were anxious to purchase home-made goods, and they found the 
Irish starch equal to the best English made, so they soon established a 
good local trade. The British manufacturers became alarmed, they saw 
their monopoly melting away, and soon formed a pool, and being wealthy, 
could afford to lose money to break their native competitor. They 
undersold the young Irishmen, and also got their wares passed off as 
Irish, and with long credit and other inducements got back their trade. 
The consequence was the young men failed and they lost their money 
and time in a hopeless struggle against their powerful foreign rivals. 

Native rule would have stopped these British goods at the Irish Cus- 
tom House, and given to Irish manufactures a free field in their own land, 
and so built up their industries, which sentimental cries for native goods 
never can do. They may make a small spasmodic effort out of which 
nothing permanent can possibly come. 

Under self-government administering native laws, there would be 
ample room for the investment of capital, which opening is not in Ireland 
to-day. 

The spread of the distress became too serious to be ignored, and the 
English thought they should do something, and that by giving Ireland 
back a trifling moiety of her stolen money under the name of alms, gain 
a name for generosity to her suffering sister, Ireland, among the nations. 
This plan took shape in getting the amiable woman who presided in the 
Viceregal Lodge to open a famine fund. The Duchess of Marlborough 
sent a most touching appeal for contributions to the English wealthy 
classes. This letter appeared in the London Times. 

This famine fund was started under most distinguished auspices ; 
several ladies became suddenly interested in the duchess' charity. A 
committee was formed of the wives and daughters of the wealthy, and, as 
they term it, the ennobled. Several titled ladies became members of this 
committee, and collected from their friends in England large sums to 
swell the fund. Her Most Gracious Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great 
Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, and with a roll of minor titles. 
(What a pity the sovereignty of France was dropped after her grand- 
father's time — Queen of France would sound so dignified and add 
additional luster to the royal herald's proclamations !) This most puissant 
sovereign, the greatest that sat on the throne of England since Alfred 
the Great, as Mr. Lynch of Elphin put it, subscribed the munificent sum of 
^500 to the Lady Lieutenant's fund. What generosity for a woman of 
her immense wealth, $2500 to feed the starving people of her kingdom 
of Ireland (?), the land that gave her " the great and only," as well as 
several other military and naval heroes — the country she loves so much, 
as did the other members of the house of Guelph, who styled themselves 



254 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Ireland's sovereigns, most conspicuous in her generosity as in her 
virtues ! What sufferings would the Irish not undergo but for Victoria's 
imperial subscription ? The Prince of Wales gave ^250, which, in pro- 
portion to his wealth, was ten times his royal and imperial mother's 
donation. Amid the list of contributors are to be found Mr. Gladstone's 
name for ^50, and Mr. W. E. Forster for the same amount. 

The Provincial press complained that instead of the Government 
giving them some remunerative employment, they started this beg- 
ging list, which was for the purpose of degrading the people. And 
Ireland was once more a mendicant before the world, repeating the per- 
petual cry, give me alms, good and generous nations ! Alms ! alms ! 
No wonder that the Irish nation could spawn forth such a creeping thing 
as Lynch of Elphin, of a class that crawls along to kiss the hem of the 
royal garment, a class that stoops to whine beneath the tyrant who vents 
his rheum upon their prostrate carcasses, and who has made Ireland pro- 
duce generations of hopeless poverty and ignorance, and placed her in the 
degrading position of a beggar looking for charity. There must be some 
great fiat of the Eternal that has saved Irishmen from degenerating into 
a savage race with little above the intellect of the Australian aborigine. 
This system of alien rule was designed with demoniac and serpent cunning 
to destroy not only the nation, but the instincts, the education, the heroic, 
noble, manly qualities that naturally belong to the Irish Celt, and substi- 
tute in their place meanness, suspicion, cowardice, avarice, crouching 
slavery, and whining beggary. Why need Irishmen wonder when they see 
some members of their race possess these latter qualities ? It is one of 
God's great miracles that the Irish race have not hopelessly sunk genera- 
tions ago into the slough of ignorance and poverty which surrounds them. 
But that which Britain meant to be her triumph over them, may yet be 
her most fearful scourge. For, if Macaulay's New Zealander comes to 
sketch the ruins of London, he will probably be the descendant of some 
exiled Celt. The race that shall — if ever the prophecy be fulfilled — lay in 
ashes and raze to the ground that modern Babylon, London, will be the 
oppressed and outraged Celt, who to-day crieth : " How long, O Lord, 
how long ? " 

Britain is not content with destroying Ireland's material prosperity at 
home ; she has pursued the Irish people with malevolence and slander in 
their exile. Through her literature and the similarity of language, she has 
in these United States, time and again, tried to poison the mind of the 
American people against them. At the same time hating America, her 
institutions, and above all her manufacturing prosperity, with no less 
venom and animosity than she does Irish existence. She holds up to 
scorn and ridicule the vices which her accursed system implanted in some 
of the impoverished Irish emigrants. In Europe she has tried the self- 
same mission of slander, but the difference of language and the high 
social standing of the foreign Irish, who occupy some of the leading and 
most honorable positions in their several countries, bar her way. 

She has tried to make Ireland's national issue with her a religious 
struggle, and thus appealed to the prejudice of bigots. History records 
that Catholic England was as brutal in her horrors and persecutions as 
Protestant England could possibly be ; there are to-day no more potent 
enemies of Ireland than Catholic Englishmen. 

She has gone to Rome to slander Irishmen, in the palace of the 
Vatican she accuses them of religious backslidings, and she tries to fan 
into secession and rebellion the Northern Irish, working upon these 
men's prejudices, accusing Irishmen of supposed Papistical leanings, thus 
playing off one prejudice against another ; totally devoid of honor, 
seeking by every base intrigue to pursue her destructive career. What 



SHADOW OF APPROACHING FAMINE. 255 

stories were circulated in higher Catholic circles in Rome men can easily 
speculate on. One of the Papal organs displayed its lack of true 
knowledge of the Irish situation in the following, which appeared at this 
time in the Osservatore Romano : 

" It is evident that the Irish press is trying to get rid of all Catholic 
members who are too high-minded to pander to revolution. Mr. Parnell, 
instead of demanding along with his Catholic colleagues better legisla- 
tion, urges his hearers to confiscation, and allows them in his presence to 
utter prayers for assasination and armed revolt. 

" Exciting harangues cannot but produce agrarian outbreak, which 
will be severely repressed and which will augment the misery a hundred 
fold." 

The mid-winter brought bitter sufferings to the poverty-stricken 
peasants. Men's hearts bled in agony and suppressed rage, when they 
thought how powerless they were to aid their suffering fellow-men, and 
elevate them from a pauper's position. 

Mr. Parnell prepared to depart for America on his mission of patriotic 
duty to his native land. 

A great crowd came to see him off at Queenstown, whence he 
sailed, accompanied by Mr. Dillon and Mr. Healy, on December 20, 1879. 
An immense throng waited the arrival of the train at Queenstown which 
conveyed Ireland's envoys to the great republic of peoples. When 
Mr. Parnell, M. P., Mr. W. H. O'Sullivan, M. P., and others stepped out 
of the train there was loud cheering from the crowd. They immediately 
went to the covered portion of the platform, where speeches were deliv- 
ered, thanking Mr. Parnell for his exertions in the interest of the tenant 
farmers and wishing him a good voyage. In reply he said he hoped one 
of the results of his visit would be to show that the hearts of the Ameri- 
can people would beat warmly toward Ireland. They had every day tele- 
grams of the great movement that was progressing in all the vast cities 
of America. The people there were already organizing and forming 
themselves for the purpose giving Ireland practical assistance. 

Mr. Parnell went on board the steamer Scythia, accompanied by 
Mr. Dillon, and Mr. T. Healy, his secretary. Mr. Parnell stated that 
he expected to return by the 1st of March next, but that if Mr. Davitt 
and Mr. Killen were put on trial in the mean time he would return home 
immediately. After the steamer left Queenstown the Land League of 
Ireland sent a cable dispatch to the Parnell reception committee of New 
York, informing them that Mr. Parnell was authorized by the home 
organization to collect funds for the relief of the distress in Ireland, and 
that the League here would see to its proper distribution. 

As the Irish representatives steamed out of the magnificent Cove 
of Cork, hundreds of voices wished them a Godspeed on their noble 
mission. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

(1880.) 

MR. PARNELL'S CRUSADE OF SHAMING BRITAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. 

Preparations to Receive Mr. Parnell — Parnell Reception Committee— Arrival of Scythia 
in New York — Reception on Board the Steamer — Demonstration in Madison Square 
Garden — Mr. Parnell's Great Speech — The American Nation the Arbiter in the 
Struggle — The Land System — Shaming England — Irish Poor Law System — " Slowly 
Torturing Our Country to Death " — Ireland's Great Weapon — American Public 
Opinion — Reply to Mr. Kavanagh of Borris — Free Land — Speech of Mr. Dillon — 
Cut off the Landlords' Supplies — Resolutions — Mr. Kavanagh's Letter to the New 
York Herald — Solid Interest in the Soil — Only Remedy Emigration — Effect of 
Emigration — Disband Armies, Dismantle Fleets — Peasant Proprietors Under Foreign 
Rule — Purchase of the Land — Interest and Repayment — Belgium Under Self- 
Government — Protected Industries — Glasgow Contract. 

While the good ship Scythia was steaming over the mighty waters 
that divide the New and Old Worlds, carrying Charles Stewart Parnell 
and John Dillon on their mission of mercy, the exiled children of the 
Gael in the United States were preparing to give them a due and fitting 
reception. 

On the departure of the Scythia from the Cove of Cork this message 
flashed over the cable to the honorary secretaries of the Parnell recep- 
tion committee in New York — Dr. Philip Donlon and Thomas B. 
Bannerman : 

" Queenstown, December 21, 1879. 

" Parnell and Dillon have just sailed. The Land League has com- 
mended them to receive assistance for the relief of the distress which the 
League will distribute. The distress is very pressing. 

(Signed) " Land League, Dublin." 

Names, which were then unknown outside the circle of their imme- 
diate friends, and which have in the past few years become household 
words, were not appended to this dispatch; it contained no name, but was 
simply signed Land League, which in concrete contained the endorse- 
ment of many men — men who have since fruitlessly struggled in the great 
crusade just then inaugurated. 

A public meeting was called to assemble at Newark, N. J., on Decem- 
ber 29, 1879, to collect funds for the relief of the Irish distress. 

The New York relief committee met on December 29 at Room 24, 
Cooper Union. Judge Elkin presided ; Dr. Donlon and Mr. Bannerman 
acted as secretaries. The chairman of the reception committee, Mr. 
Charles O'Rourke, reported that the receipts amounted to $415. It was 
there and then decided by the committee to have headquarters at Room 
118, Astor House. Collector Merritt promised the committee who waited 
on him to allow the use of a revenue cutter to go out and meet the 
incoming steamer. 

A little later another portion of the reception committee met at the 
Fifth Avenue Hotel, General Martin T. McMahon in the chair. A large 
collection was made ; several subscriptions of $100 were handed in. The 
delegates that arrived from Chicago were Mr. Stone, Mr. John F. Fin- 
nerty, and Mr. J. J. Fitzgibbons. Dr. William Carroll associated with 
him several prominent gentlemen to organize a reception committee in 

256 




CHARLES S. PARNELL. 

From a photograph taken in Washington, D. C, and presented by Mr. Parnell to 

Captain J. Murphy, leader of the rescue party that caused the Clerkenvvell explosion. 



MR. PARNELL IN THE UNITED STATES. 257 

Philadelphia. All the vast cities of this great continent were aroused to 
activity in the cause of Ireland, not alone to feed the starving poor in 
that country, but to aid in any feasible movement made known to them 
for the permanent removal of the cause which had so dire and distressing 
an effect. 

The Scythia, with C. S. Parnell, John Dillon, and Timothy Healy on 
board, dropped anchor at Quarantine at two o'clock in the morning 
of January 2, 1880. The reception committee left the pier at seven 
o'clock and steamed down the harbor to welcome the new arrivals from 
the old land. 

In the mean time the ubiquitous New York reporter got on board the 
steamer and had procured an interview with Mr. Parnell. 

"I am," said Mr. Parnell, "a delegate from the National League. 
I do not come to America as a private gentleman, or as a member of 
Parliament." 

" Do you think that the change you propose can be brought about 
without violence ?" 

" It should be so, and it is to this end we are striving. There is 
force enough in moral power when it is brought to the support of a just 
cause. We propose only that the tiller of the soil shall be its owner. 
Then and then only will he have a permanent interest in it, and then he 
becomes a good citizen. We are in no way Communists, as you know 
the word here, or as we know it from the French models." 

" How do you propose to work your reform ? " 

" One way is when estates come forward for sale, buy them in the 
Landed Estates Court." 

While Mr. Parnell was taking his breakfast and talking to the news- 
paper men, a rousing cheer from over two hundred lusty throats came 
into the cabin where he was seated, and the ringing cheers rang over the 
waters — Irish America's reception to the envoys of the suffering sons of 
the Green Isle. The revenue cutter with the reception committee on 
board came alongside the Scythia, the deputation climbed up the dangling 
rope ladder and clambered on to the main deck. As Mr. Parnell a 
moment later emerged from the saloon he was received with another 
ringing cheer of welcome. With some of the committee he was ac- 
quainted, having been introduced to them when in America with Mr. 
0"Connor Power, in 1876. Hasty introductions were given and received. 
Without further delay they adjourned to the saloon and stood in a group 
around Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon under the skylight. Mr. John E. 
Devlin, chairman of the reception committee, read a very complimentary 
address, promising on the part of the citizens of New York hearty 
co-operation in the envoys' mission. The Chicago deputation presented 
an address and invitation to their beautiful city, promising on behalf of 
their citizens earnest support for the cause Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon 
advocated. After suitable replies were spoken by the Irish envoys, 
thanking the several deputations for their cordial and kindly reception, 
the whole party drove to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where apartments were 
taken for the Irish guests. 

While Mr. Parnell and his friends were resting themselves, the recep- 
tion committee held a meeting in Mr. Parnell's parlor and decided to 
have a sub-committee of six in attendance at all hours to wait on Mr. 
Parnell. This committee was to wait on him during his stay in New 
York. Every delegation was to be received by this committee, who were 
to present them to their visitors. The committee was composed of the 
following men : Messrs. Bannerman, O'Donoghue, John Devoy, John 
Breslin, Michael Kerwin, and P. McGuire. 

There was great stir in Irish circles in New York consequent on the 



258 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

visit of Messrs. Parnell and Dillon ; that excitement which Irishmen love 
so much they had then to the full. A great demonstration and public 
meeting was organized for Sunday, January 4, 1880, in the Madison 
Square Garden. 

The place was literally packed with people. When the Irish delegates 
made their appearance on the platform it was the signal for an outburst 
of applause that was repeated for some time. Gilmore's band supplied 
the music and all the arrangements were perfect. On the platform were 
a crowd of prominent Irishmen and Americans. Among the latter were 
William E. Robinson, Thurlow Weed, Judge Gildersleeve, Judge Acker, 
and others. Judge Gildersleeve was elected chairman of the meeting. 
In his opening address he said, alluding to his position as chairman : 
" It is an honor which I highly appreciate. The right to heal upon the 
Sabbath day was established two thousand years ago, and on this first 
Sabbath of the new year we come together to learn how best we can help 
to heal the sufferings of impoverished Ireland. The audience will soon 
have the pleasure of listening to a gentleman who is an honor alike to 
America and Ireland, the grandson of one of America's most distin- 
guished naval officers." With these few words of introduction Judge 
Gildersleeve took his seat. On Mr. Parnell coming forward the audience 
renewed the applause which greeted his advent on the platform. Mr. 
Parnell said : 

"Judge Gildersleeve, ladies, and gentlemen, I have to thank you, in 
the first place, for the kind cordiality of your reception, and I have to 
apologize in advance for my imperfections and to regret that the great 
cause which I stand here to-night to plead before the people of New York 
has not been intrusted to far better and abler hands. (Cries of " No ! 
no ! ") But, ladies and gentlemen, I fear not for this cause. (Hear, 
hear, and applause.) Imperfect and inadequate as must be the way in 
which I shall place it before you, I feel confident that from its greatness 
and its justice it needs no great effort on my part to set it before you in 
such a way as to have the heartiest sympathy of this great and free 
nation. (Applause.) The American people occupy to-day a proud 
position in respect to this question — a position which I as one who boasts 
of some American blood (applause) feel justly proud. And I am glad 
when I think I may have had some moral share in directing the attention 
of this country to our cause. (Applause.) 

" The American nation has by common consent been made the arbiter 
in the great struggle for land in Ireland. Within the last few days a 
most extraordinary occurrence has taken place. The landlords of Ire- 
land for the first time in their history have recognized their true position 
as culprits, and have come before the bar of American public opinion to 
plead their cause as best they may. (Applause.) I rejoice that the 
pages of the New York Herald " 

At this point the speaker was interrupted ; the audience burst mto a 
storm of hissing which Mr. Parnell tried to calm down, but which lasted 
for some time. When the troubled passions of the angry audience sub- 
sided, the speaker resumed his address. 

" There is no necessity to hiss the New York Herald. (Hisses re- 
peated.) It has certainly been indirectly of the greatest possible service to 
our cause. (Applause.) I repeat that I rejoice that its pages have been 
opened to the landlords' side of the question. (" Bravo ! " and hisses.) 
I rejoice that a man of great ability like Mr. Kavanagh has come forward 
to make the best defense that he can for the accursed system that prevails 
in Ireland. (Hisses.) Thinking people in this country will now feel an 
interest in a question which they could not have felt upon a mere ex parte 



MR. PARNELL IN THE UNITED STATES. 259 

statement. And it is fitting that the people of America should know the 
very best that can be said for the landlords. (Applause.) 

" Now, I wish to explain very shortly our object in visiting this country, 
and I may say that the intention we originally formed has been con- 
siderably modified by the pressure of circumstances. Originally we pro- 
posed only to address you on behalf of our political organization, but the 
course of events in Ireland has culminated so rapidly — a terrible far and 
wide spread famine is so imminent — that we feel constrained to abandon 
our original intention and to leave ourselves open to receive from the 
people of America money for the purposes of our political organization, 
and also money for the relief of the pressing distress in Ireland. 
(Applause.) We propose, then, to form two funds — one for the relief of 
distress, and the other for the purely political purpose of forwarding an 
organization. (Applause.) 

"These funds will be kept entirely distinct, so that the donors will be 
afforded the opportunity of doing as they please in the matter. It has 
been suggested by a very influential paper in this city that we ought to 
devote our attention only to the relief of distress (hisses), and that we 
should only join the committee which has been proposed by the New 
York Herald (hisses) for the relief of distressed Irish landlords and the 
British Government in general. (Great laughter.) But if we accept the 
very good advice that has been so charitably extended to us in the shape 
of words within the last few days, I am afraid we should incur the impu- 
tation of putting the cart before the horse. (A Voice — " The Herald is 
getting well paid.") 

" The cause of the present distress is the unequal and artificial system 
of land tenure which prevails in Ireland. The effect of that cause is of 
course the distress, and while we take care to do the best we can — and 
the best we can will be but little to relieve distress, we must also take care 
that we take advantage of the unexampled opportunity which is now pre- 
sented to us for the purpose of sweeping away this bad system. In '47 
and subsequent years when the great Irish famine took place, America 
came forward first among the nations with unexampled liberality. But 
did that liberality prevent the famine ? Did it prevent millions from 
dying of starvation or the pestilence which followed ? (Cries of " No! no!") 
Did it prevent the banishment of many more millions ? Did it prevent 
the scenes in Ireland in these years — the scenes on board the emigrant 
ships ? No ! No charity that can be given by America will avail to prevent 
Irish distress. That must be the duty of the British Government and we 
must see that we shame that government into a sense of its obligation. 
(Great applause.) 

" Where, where is the process of charity to end ? Are we to be com- 
pelled continually, every ten or twelve years, to appear as mendicants 
before the world ? (Cries of " No! no! ") Then I say to the people of this 
country : ' If you wish to rescue us from that position, help us in destroy- 
ing the system which brings it on.' (Applause.) 

" America subscribed and subscribed liberally in those years. The 
people of Ireland living in this country have been subscribers ever 
since. (A voice : " It all goes to the landlords.") 

" My friend in the crowd has anticipated me by telling you that it 
goes to the landlords. Yes, the hard-earned savings that you have sent 
with such true devotion to your fellow-countrymen over there have gone 
in payment of excessive rents and bolstering up this terrible system. 

" / have said just no7V that we must shame the British Govern- 
ment into a sense of its obligations to Ireland in this matter. (" Hear, 
hear!") But I regret that they have shown their usual want of recogni- 
tion of those obligations up to the present. What was the Irish Chief 



260 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Secretary's reply to those who waited upon him to establish fuel depots 
through the wastes of Ireland ? — for I must explain to those who are not 
acquainted with Irish matters that almost all Ireland is depending for its 
fuel upon the turf that is cut in the bogs. This fuel, owing to the exces- 
sive rains during the whole summer, is in a state of mud. It is entirely 
unfit to burn, and in addition to the pressure of hunger, we have the 
added pressure of cold. Well, Mr. Lowther (hisses), when he was asked 
to establish fuel depots,— and I only mention this as an example of the 
way in which our rulers over there treat this -grave question, — said : 
* Oh, they have fuel enough to burn bonfires in honoring Mr. Davitt.' 
(Applause.) Because a few dried or half dried furze bushes were lighted 
on the Irish hills in honor of the release of Davitt, this paltry excuse is 
put forward, gravely put forward by the responsible Minister of the 
Crown. 

" But if we examine the further action of the Government we find it 
equally marked by the same cold neglect and indifference. The Govern- 
ment desired to drive the people of Ireland upon the Irish Poor Law 
system, and they have replied in answer to every appeal that they cannot 
interfere, and that the ordinary action of the Poor Law is sufficient to 
meet the emergency. Now it was proved in the years gone by, and it has 
been proved frequently ever since, that the Irish tenant will die in the 
ditch rather than enter the poor house (applause), and he is right. 
(Applause.) 

" The Irish Poor Law system is the most fiendish and ungenerous system 
of all those we have received from England for the purposes of slowly 
torturing our country to death. The ties of family are broken up. 
The father is separated from his children, the children from their mother, 
the wife from her husband, and the wretched inmates of the workhouse, from 
the day they enter, are consigned to what is for many of them but a living 
death. ' All ye that enter here abandon hope ! ' may be appropriately written 
upon the portals of every workhouse in Ireland. (Applause. A voice : 
" Shoot them from the word go.") 

" Now, if in 1846, before the Irish famine had commenced, the ques- 
tion could have been brought before the American people as it is being 
brought to-day, whether by one side or the other, or by both, that famine 
would have been impossible, for the Government would have been shamed 
into stopping it. But what happened ? I do not wish to excite your 
passions by reference to the past. You know the past very well. 
The history of the past is written in letters that will never be erased from 
the Irish mind. (Cries of "Never! never!") But we have sufficient 
evidence in the present for our purpose. It is now admitted on all hands 
that distress is imminent and the discussion of this question will undoubtedly 
force the British Government to take action. Americans will come 
forward as they have always come forward, and be the first to help our 
people nobly and generously. They must not forget the great value and 
benefit that is to be derived from this question and its open discussion in 
the face of the nations of the world. (Applause.) But if, as we have 
been so frequently advised, we had allowed the present moment to go by with- 
out any attempt at organization, we should have had a repetition of '47 and 
its terrible scenes. Government neglect would have been the same as ever. 
The hearts of our people would have been broken by physical suffering and 
devotion. They would have become disorganized and exasperated. Evictions 
in multitudes would have taken place. Retaliatory action would have been 
adopted by the exasperated masses. We should have had another ineffective 
rebellion. The wild justice of revenge would have been invoked against the 
Irish landlords. What a contrast is there ! Instead of chaos and dis- 
integration, the Irish people now present a remarkable spectacle. Firm, 



MR. PARNELL IN THE UNITED STATES. 261 

confidant, and self-reliant, with death literally staring them in the face, 
they stand within the limit of the law and the constitution, and the first to 
set them the example of breaking the law and outstripping that law and 
outstripping the constitution has been the very government of the country 
which was sworn to do only that which is right. (Hisses.) 

" The attention of the whole civilized world is ce?itered upon Ireland 
and very shortly the merits of our question will be known in all parts. 
We have saved the lives of the landlords and we have saved the lives of 
the people. (Applause.) Now I do not wish, in fact it would be impos- 
sible for me, in the presence of this immense multitude, to go into many 
details. I can only speak very generally in reference to many branches 
of this great question, but if asked what do you propose? I may state 
generally that we propose to make the occupiers of the soil its owners. (Great 
applause.) We wish to do this with as little injury to what may be consid- 
ered to be vested interests as possible. No physical violence, no unconstitu- 
tional action is contemplated, but in my judgment what " 

A terrible tumult here arose in the audience and the speaker could 
not be heard. It was evident the last words spoken were not in 
harmony with those addressed. 

" As I have repeatedly said, American public opinion is one of ouv great- 
est weapons, and the landlords themselves, by invoking that public opinion, 
have shown the very high value that they place upon it. I feel that this is a 
very great compliment to you, that the proud British aristocracy should 
humble itself and appear as suppliants before this great democracy. 
(Cries, applause, and loud whistling.) And they have put forward a 
gentleman, Mr. Kavanagh — (hisses) — a man of signal ability, to plead 
their cause. And I will do him the justice to say that he has been the 
very best advocate that the circumstance admitted. (A Voice — " Where 
are his legs ? " Laughter.) 

" Well, never mind his legs or his arms, he has got a very good head. 
And this gentleman has advanced a variety of objections to our plans. 
He has told us that the system of ownership will entail subdivision and 
subletting, and he has pointed to the old history before the famine (when 
subdivision and subletting did undoubtedly exist to a very great and evil 
extent) as a proof of the justice of his assertion. But the circumstance, 
the condition of affairs that we seek to establish, is very different from 
that which obtained before the famine. Before the famine the system of 
renting land was enforced, and that system of renting necessitated sub- 
division and subletting. But we contemplate to replace that system by 
one of rule. We desire to make land free, so that everybody who has 
money to buy it, may buy as much as he needs of it. Under the system 
of renting it is impossible to sell. The difficulties of proving a title are 
so great under the present laws, that in the case of small holdings, the 
cost of proving the title exceeds, very frequently, the purchase value of 
the holding itself. Then, as now, the laws of entail and settlement were 
in full force. We desire to abolish the laws of entail and settlement 
(applause) which prevent the natural crumbling away of properties 
that wise nature has ordained, in order to prevent the property of the 
world from passing into a few hands. (Applause.) Local registration 
of land, such as you have in this country, should also follow, so as to 
make it as easy to sell a bit of land as it is to sell a haystack or a bale of 
cotton. (Applause.) 

" Subdivision is also produced by the system of letting, but I contend 
that no injurious subdivision would take place if we had a free system of 
sale of land existing in Ireland. I believe that under such a system the 
size of the farms would be regulated by natural causes ; that a man would 
not care to buy a farm which zvas too small for profitable cultivation. 



262 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

And in that way the size of Irish farms would, by natural causes, gradually 
become suited to the markets, the method of cultivation, and the crops 
grown. Then we are also told, by Mr. Kavanagh, of the example of a pro- 
prietor who leased in perpetuity their farms to fifty tenants, with the result 
that they passed into the hands of middlemen. The same reason that I 
have just explained induced that action also. If you sell an estate in Ire- 
land and sell the farms of the tenants, if you leave the laws of entail and 
settlement as they now are, if you render it impossible for a man to sell a 
small bit of land save at a cost which exceeds the purchase price of il y 
then, in the ' course of a generation or two, you would undoubtedly have 
those farms back in the hands of middlemen or of landlords. We, on 
the contrary, desire to arrange the conditions so that they shall be suited 
to the great change that we contemplate. And we can point to the 
example of other countries — of France and of Belgium, where land is 
limited as it is in Ireland — for the best, the very best, example of the 
truth of our reasoning and of the explanations we lay before you. Well, 
those gentlemen have proceeded to make certain statements, or rather 
misstatements, of a rather barefaced character. (Hisses.) Now it is a 
common saying in legal circles over in Ireland 'If you have a bad case 
abuse the plaintiff's attorney.' And so, I suppose, Mr. Kavanagh thinks 
the best thing he can do is to abuse us, since he knows that his case is 
hopeless. We do not intend to follow his bad example in that respect. 
We intend to treat him with the utmost courtesy and consideration, and 
we hope, if possible, to induce him to come before you again in order to 
give us opportunities of replying to him again. He tells us we propose 
to apply money raised in America to buying out the landlords. He need 
not be uneasy, for not one cent of your money will ever go into his pockets. 
(Applause.) And then he goes on to say that none of it will go to the 
relief of distress, and that we propose to organize an armed rebellion 
with it. (Cheers.) Well, I have no doubt that many of my fellow country- 
men in this country would like to organize an armed rebellion (great cheer- 
ing, the audience burst into shouts and cries of " Yes! yes! "), but I must 
regret to disappoint them also, because I must in truth and honesty tell 
you that, however unpopular such a statement maybe, not one cent of the 
money contributed and handed to us will go toward organizing an armed 
rebellion in Ireland. 

" I do not wish to abuse Mr. Kavanagh. and I am bound to admit 
that during the high prices of the last few years his estate was let at a 
fair value, although I regret to say that he, like some other Irish land- 
lords, has refused to grant any reasonable reduction of rent, which has 
become necessary owing to the extraordinary fall in prices and American 
competition. But the fact that Mr. Kavanagh's land was rented at a 
fair value during the last few years, will not excuse the many rack-renting 
Irish landlords who have taken the last pound of Irish flesh and the last 
drop of blood. We know too well that Irish land is high-rented 
and that a very large proportion is rack-rented, and until Mr. Kava- 
nagh proves by statistics that this is not the case, he cannot expect to 
be believed in supporting the negative on such evidence. 

" Well, then, he says that rents are not made in respect to improve- 
ments made by tenants. Now I shall put one landlord against another. 
In refuting this I shall choose two estates of a large absentee landlord, — 
a class who, as a rule, do not rack-rent their lands, — and I shall choose 
the testimony of a man of Mr. Kavanagh's own rank and proclivities, 
an extensive land agent in Ireland, Mr. Stewart Trench, speaking of 
the Barony of Farron. I wish you to understand, gentleman, the sup- 
position is that rent is raised in respect to the tenant's improvements. 
Speaking in his book ' Realities of Irish Life,' at page 68, of the Barony 



MR. PARNELL IN THE UNITED STATES. 263 

of Farron, in the county of Monaghan, over which he was their agent. 
Mr. Trench tells us that in the year 1606 the whole Barony was rented 
for the sum of ^250. What do you suppose is the rental of that Barony 
to-day ? The rental of that Barony to-day is somewhere like ^"80,000, 
and the added value, from ^250 to ^80,000, has been the work of 
tenants. Not anything that the landlord has done has added one penny 
value to this property. He has toiled not, neither has he spun, and is 
now in receipt of ^80,000 out of a property which in 250 years has been 
raised by the exertions of these poor people from the value of ^250 to 
^80,000. Mr. Trench admits that this was done by the exertions of the 
tenants, and not those of the landlords, for he says at page 69 : 'It was 
during the period that the native inhabitants, few or some of whom were 
even disciplined by the aristocratic owners of the soil, increased and mul- 
tiplied to a great extent and that the waste and wild lands were fenced 
and enclosed and ultimately converted into cultivation to meet the wants 
of the rapidly increasing population, so that in 1843, only seventy-four 
years after the estimated value of the year 1769, the rental of the estate 
was raised to upward of ^40,000, while the inhabitants had increased so 
that by the census of '41 the population amounted to upward of 44,000 
souls. 

" Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is the process that has gone on in 
every estate in Ireland. The example 1 have chosen was under a bettet 
landlord than the majority, and yet you see that during this period the 
rent roll of this estate has been rolled up this serious amount. I think 
I am entitled to contend that I have proved by the mouth of Mr. Stewart 
Trench that Mr. Kavanagh's assertions that rents are not raised in respect 
to improvements by tenants is false and utterly groundless. Now he tells 
us also that capricious eviction has not taken place. Well, I say in reply 
to that, that your own knowledge of the history of the Irish land ques- 
tion suffered in your own person, experienced by yourselves, is a sufficient 
refutation of such a statement. (Applause.) I have now come to the close 
of the few observations — I am afraid rather lengthy ones — that 1 venture 
to make to you to-night. (Cries of " Go on ! ") 

" There are others to speak. My honorable friend Mr. Dillon (great 
cheers), the son of the late J. B. Dillon, member for the county of Tip- 
perary, who found in '48 a congenial home in this country during the few 
years that he was under the ban of the British law as a prosecuted felon, 
would like also to say a few words on this important question. 

" I can only in conclusion express my conviction that the time has come 
when victory is about to crown the exertions of the Irish people in their 
great struggle for land. (Applause.) The handwriting has appeared upon 
the wall, and though vain attempts may be made from time to time to 
misdirect public opinion to bolster up an expiring system, I confidently 
look forward to the time when the tiller of the soil in Ireland may, as in 
other free countries, reap the benefit of his exertions (applause), and 
hand that result down to his children, and when instead of proscribed labor, 
instead of offering every inducement to the tiller of the land to allow it 
to remain idle and barren, the great exertion which our people have 
shown themselves always ready to make when they are, working for them- 
selves and not as slaves, may be spent upon Irish land and then I believe 
ihat one great step toward the freedom of Ireland will have been made 
(applause); that we shall have put a nail into the coffins of the system 
of English misrule in Ireland (applause). Remove one great impediment 
to the union of all classes and all religions there (great cheers), and that 
we shall have the wish of every Irish patriot in all ages realized that the 
orange and the green may be united (deafening cheers continued for 
several minutes), the Protestant and the Catholic enabled to work to- 



264 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

gether for the good of their country (applause), and no cause may exist 
to prevent any class of our countrymen from doing their duty by the land 
that has given them birth." (Enthusiastic cheering.) 

As Mr. Parnell concluded his able address an Irish harp, the work of 
two young Dublin ladies, the Misses Bogan and Wyeth, was presented 
to him on the platform. The waving of hats, handkerchiefs, and the 
loud and continued cheering displayed the enthusiasm of the vast 
audience. 

Judge Gildersleeve then introduced Mr. John Dillon. The son of the 
'48 patriot received an ovation from the multitude as he stepped to the 
front of the platform. 

Mr. Dillon said that when he and his companion had decided to leave 
Ireland and come to America in search of sympathy for the cause for 
which they were working, he expected a hearty welcome, but this recep- 
tion outdid his highest hopes. 

After alluding to the joy with which the news of this meeting would 
be received in Ireland, he said he thought the feeling which prompted it 
was the most honorable that could obtain in any nation. He and his 
associate came as envoys of an oppressed nation, and had been received 
not coldly but with honor. 

His country had been held up to the civilized world as a nation of 
paupers, but coming here as its representatives they had been received as 
ambassadors. The honorable reception which had been accorded to 
them as the envoys of Ireland would meet with more gratitude than could 
be felt for any mere charity. The Irish, he said, are a proud and sensi- 
tive people who know how to set a high value upon the sympathy of a 
nation like the American. 

The Land League, lie said, has already achieved a remittance of rent to 
the amount of one mil/ion pounds. 

This movement was started with the intention of keeping in view 
the history of the great famine of 1846, which was well known to 
many of his hearers. In spite of the warnings in that instance there 
was no remission of rents. Rents were exacted in November from 
men who died of starvation in January. In the present case he said 
they were determined that the world should know that a famine was 
approaching in Ireland, and that the Government would take no action 
for the relief of the people. Their rule of conduct now was to cut off 
the supplies of the landlords and save the people. The result, he said, is 
that the landlords already admit that there is a famine, and are trying to 
defend themselves before the American people. It is impossible, he said, 
to disassociate the Land League movement from the movement for relief. 
In proof of this he cited the case of the Widow Driscoll. She had barely 
enough to keep a family for three months, and yet she was forced to allow 
her old father to starve because the agent had put his mark upon the 
stock for rent. It was proper then to consider whether it would be wiser 
to collect money in this country for charity or for assistance of the Land 
League in this work of forcing (?) the landlords to do their duty. Charity, 
however liberal, would feed the Irish people for about three weeks only. 
In closing, Mr. Dillon illustrated the pitiable condition of the Irish 
peasantry and workingmen — men he claimed who work in the shop for 
eight cents a day and in some cases fall dead in the streets returning 
from their labor. 

After the close of Mr. Dillon's speech, the resolutions indorsing the 
Land League programme were read. After reading them, the meeting 
separated, crowds remained outside to cheer the Irish envoys, and the 
new programme of freeing Ireland from foreign Rule by first shaming 
England into creating an occupying proprietary on the land, received a 



MR. PARNELL IN THE UNITED STATES. 265 

gigantic impetus in the United States by the masterly and intelligent 
statements of Mr. Parnell and his companion, Mr. John Dillon. 

The following is the landlord's letter alluded to by Mr. Parnell in the 
course of his able address : 

" Borris House, Borris, Carlow. 
"To the Editor of the New York Herald : 

"Allow me to thank you for the opportunity you afford of endeavoring 
to place the landlord's side of the case in true unwashed colors before 
the American public. 

" The question, always an important one, is more than ever before the 
public now, on account of the action of Mr. Parnell and the associates of 
the political agitator, who is influenced by no consideration or principle 
save his own advancement. 

" It is no doubt a tempting course to go to the poor and uneducated, 
and working on their poverty by promises of riches and on their ignorance 
by gross and studied misrepresentation, endeavor to obtain their confidence 
and support for political ends, and then when their purposes are secured 
leave, as they invariably have done, their unfortunate dupes to the con- 
sequence of their own folly. 

" This, in my opinion, has been the main and guiding influence actuat- 
ing those who have made themselves so conspicuous in the present agita- 
tion. It is in fact the corroboration of the old axiom that history repeats 
itself, and Ireland is again suffering from what she has often suffered 
before, by being made the battlefield of political strife, not this time 
directly by the contention for power of the two great political parties in 
the state, but by a small lot of adventurers who, counting on the proba- 
bility of a political crisis in which the members of those two great parties 
likely to be returned to the House of Commons at the next general election 
may be nearly even, foresee the prospect and the chance of grasping the 
balance of power and thus earning for themselves that notoriety which 
otherwise it might not be easy for them to obtain. 

" So far as we can judge from Mr. Parnell's speeches and the utter- 
ances of those who act with him, his proposed object in appealing to the 
American public for aid in money is to find means to establish a peasant 
proprietary in this country by sweeping the present owners from the soil. 
Some in more moderate moments have hinted that the landlords should 
receive some compensation, but advise the tenants in the mean time to pay 
no rent or only so much as they think they can safely spare after meeting 
their other requirements, in order to make the landlord accept their 
terms. A proposal such as this, I think, requires no comment. Citizens 
of a republic, or any man who lives under free institutions, will see at 
once the drift of such a policy, and appreciate how far any social con- 
dition can be preserved when the principles of meiwi and tuum are to be 
regarded as false as stairs of sand. 

" But supposing for argument's sake that the terms of this transfer of 
property were arranged ; we come to the question of the policy of the 
establishment of a tenant pfoprietary. // was a proposal with which at 
first I must confess I was strangely taken in the belief that by increasing 
the numbers of those who had a real, solid, inseparable stake in the well 
being of the country we would be adding to the natural supporters of 
law and order, and strengthening the true foundation on which the 
stability of a country must rest. 

" But while I cling to the hope and belief that some steps in that 
direction may yet be safely taken, I cannot ignore the force of the objec- 
tions which are raised against it. The main one is the danger in the 



266 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

future of subdivisions and sublettings, and I fear not only the possibility 
but the probability that after a few generations we should have the 
country in the same condition as it was before the famine. The tendency 
among the farmers to sublet is strong, and in the case of old leases where 
this is not guarded against we have examples remaining even now of 
what the effects are : families struggling to live on farms of from ten to 
two acres of poor land, that are quite inadequate to support them, and 
ground down by middlemen — a class which I am thankful now are almost 
extinct — who are the worst types of landlords, and whose acts of tyranny 
and oppression are gladly seized on by the agitators for their own pur- 
poses and quoted as examples of the working of the whole system. This 
is an evil against which I can see no safeguard if the proposal to estab- 
lish a peasant proprietary is carried. But supposing for argument's sake 
this could be prevented, you have a more insidious danger, and that is 
subdivision. Supposing, for example, a tenant proprietor with a holding 
in fee of fifty acres and a family of five children — a very small one as 
Irish families generally run — for whom he had been unable or careless to 
make provision, what would be his course at his death ? He would divide 
it among them and settle them down in allotments in fee of ten acres 
each, and, of course, there would be nothing to prevent these five pro- 
prietors doing the same thing in their turn. By degrees it is most prob- 
able that the majority of these small proprietors would become paupers, 
and their lots by process of either sale or mortgage pass from their 
possession into the hands of the district money-lender or of some wealthy 
or more prudent proprietor, and then by the natural course of events in 
no very long space of time the large proprietors would reappear possibly 
with more objectionable affinities than those who exist now. I have 
heard of a case in point which occurred some time ago where a landed 
proprietor, with more benevolence than wisdom, influenced by the same 
opinion as I have held as to the general advantage of converting the 
occupiers into the owners of the soil, gave leases at a nominal rent for 
999 years to some fifty tenants on his property, leasing the whole of one 
portion of his property in that way. What result have we ? If I am 
rightly informed there are now only two of the original lessees upon the 
lands, the other forty-eight holdings having passed by the processes to 
which I have alluded into the hands of middlemen. As I have already 
said, I was not long ago strongly in favor of the peasant proprietary pro- 
posal, but I must confess the facts which have since been brought under my 
notice have tended to shake my confidence in it and to make me to doubt 
even if the sweeping away of the landlords, which Mr. Parnell so kindly 
contemplates, were satisfactorily arranged, whether the movement would 
result in so much good to the people and to the country as he asserts 
would be the case. 

" I have not any figures by me by which I could give reliable informa- 
tion as to what the average size of English farms may be, but I believe 
I am not far wrong in my statement that they run up to over iooo acres, 
and there are very few under 200 acres. Now what have we in Ireland ? 
We have a gross number, 584,882 holdings. At or about 500 acres there 
are only 1529 holdings ; between 500 and 200 acres (the latter I take as 
about the English minimum) we have 8197 holdings, leaving 575,156 
holdings under 200 acres. Of those, 498,239 are at and under 50 acres 
and 287,546 are under 15 acres. 

" For my part I would gladly increase the size of every small holding 
upon my property, but the land is not to be got. 

" And then the only remedy that I can see for them ever is emigration 



MR. PARNELL IN THE UNITED STATES. 267 

to other countries many of which I could name, your own among the 
number, where land in abundance is to be had for very little and where 
there is ample room and opportunity to thrive and grow rich. And in 
this direction if the American people are inclined to help us, it would in 
my opinion be the truest charity ; it would be providing for those who are 
able and willing to emigrate a fairer prospect of prosperity than they 
could ever find at home, and it would afford the opportunity and facilities 
of enlarging the holdings of those who remained behind, thereby in the 
most practical and material manner improving their condition. 

" Yours truly, 

" Arthur Kavanagh." 

Mr. Kavanagh's reasons for at one time favoring peasant proprietary 
in Ireland was, he tells us, he thought that by increasing the numbers of 
those who would have an interest in the country he would make them 
upholders of law and order (the law he speaks of is British law, and the 
order submission to robbery) ; in other words, he hoped to make them 
traitors to their own nation and devoted solely to the interest of another 
island ; he had hoped that for the bribe of being permitted to live in a 
little comfort at home they would ignore the banishment of their kith and 
kin and the poverty of their brethren not belonging to the agricultural 
community. Irishmen have already expressed their fears on this subject ; 
it is believed that peasant proprietary under foreign rule would have that 
tendency. Mr. Kavanagh cannot look upon the national cause of his 
country but as*an incitement to break the law and to scenes of violence 
and disorder, upsetting of society and marring the progress of the island's 
prosperity. That which Mr. Kavanagh calls law is no more binding upon 
the Irish people than would be a bandit's orders to his prisoners captured 
for the purpose of ransom. The edicts of the British people made in their 
parliament — where to further mock Ireland, Irishmen are supposed to have 
a voice in the manufacture of these edicts, but where they find that they 
are outnumbered by six to one — these illegal mandates, called laws, are 
cunningly contrived to hold the Irish nation in bondage for the better 
interest of their British captors. Scenes of violence and disorder are the 
outcome of this cruel war of destruction which Britain has never ceased to 
carry on against Ireland ; a war which entails famine, death, and that 
demoniac machine, the Irish Poor Law system. Mr. Kavanagh's panacea 
for Irish ills is to depopulate the Irish nation. Were Mr. Kavanagh's 
large farms an accomplished fact, and were the dwellers on the smaller 
holdings swept away and banished to strange lands, the farmers them- 
selves would have families, and would they rear up their stalwart sons 
and fair daughters only to have them banished from them, as they would 
be according to Mr. Kavanagh's theory. 

And the doom this landlord passes on the Irish race is banishment 
from the beloved home, and when the dying parents close their eyes in 
death, the loving glances that should soothe the last lingering hours on. 
earth, the fond faces of their children, are banished to the land of the 
stranger, through the necessities of British supremacy in the isle of their 
birth. What a destiny for a nation ! That Britain's flag should flutter 
in the same breeze that wafts over that green island of Western Europe, 
and that continued plunder and rapine should go on undisturbed ! This 
•cruelty and torture to loving hearts must be perpetual. 

Mr. Parnell puts the cart before the horse — to use one of his own 
phrases — when he advocates peasant proprietary before Irish nationality. 
When Mr. Parnell told us he would not take off his coat to work at the 
land question, but that that road would lead to Irish self-government, he 
starts out from false premises. If he and his followers had devoted all 



268 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

their energies in every way to struggle for Irish independence, he would 
be serving the farmers ; for occupying proprietary, that would intelli- 
gently and successfully solve the land troubles of Ireland, can only come 
after the establishing of native government. There are no stepping- 
stones to self-government but destruction of illegal British power in 
Ireland. 

It is now eight years since Mr. Parnell delivered the famous New 
York speech that was to convulse the landlords. He told us that that was 
the time to settle the Irish land question, but the settlement of that Irish 
evil is removed to the Greek Kalends so far as talk can be a solution of 
it. Since that time 150,000 people have been evicted, which proves his 
remedy is no remedy, that it has hastened the uprooting of the people 
to carry out an impossible peaceful programme, so that Mr. Parnell's 
crusade of shame, which was to compel Britain to bow to outside public 
opinion and yield to Mr. Parnell's honest, sincere, and just demands, by 
this doctrine of shaming England and of educating the people of Britain 
as to the justness of Ireland's cause. As if the intelligent British, against 
whom this campaign of shame is leveled, cannot see that Britain's 
interest is to hold Ireland, and that her retention of that country must, 
as a matter of course, mean booty to Britain and ruin to Ireland. This 
dream of shaming a conqueror to surrender his spoils may go on, but the 
English public will continue voting for the retention of Ireland, even if 
the whole United States, from the President down, cried shame on her. 
And if England thought the United States would only cry shame over 
the Alabama question, not one penny would England pay. - This Govern- 
ment might amuse itself crying shame to its heart's content. This silly 
war, called exposing English misrule (as if foreign rule could be aught 
else) to the execration of mankind, can never remove that misrule. 
These doctrines have been sown broadcast and have produced a plentiful 
harvest of shame to hustle against English opinion. What have been the 
results? Five years of brutal and bloody coercion under the premier- 
ship of Mr. Gladstone, followed by a short interregnum of Tory rule, and 
next by an almost equally short term of the Liberals or, what has been 
called, as if in mockery, " A Home Rule " government. During all these 
years the evictions multiplied fivefold, and even during Mr. Gladstone's 
last government, with Home Rule Morley as Irish Chief Secretary, the 
evictions never ceased. Eleven thousand people were evicted during 
this Home Rule government of Mr. Gladstone's — his six months of horrors 
in Ireland, aided by armed forces of the Crown. On an appeal to the 
English people on the principle of Home Rule, they voted against it by an 
overwhelming majority, and brought another coercion ministry to power,, 
although three-fourths of the Irish members were elected to demand 
Home Rule. Their eighty-six votes were powerless, showing up the 
mockery of Irish representation in an alien chamber. They tell the Irish 
people the fallacious story that the English people are with them in their 
demands. Its fallacy is plainly demonstrated by accomplished facts, that 
it is not so. This is what the crusade of shame can show as results so 
far. It would be well for mankind if public opinion and justice always 
went hand in hand. It would be a millennium of happiness if wrong-doing 
would cease by the express condemnation of just men. If so, nations 
might disband their armies and dismantle their fleets. The crusade of 
shame would take the place of that crusade of murder and arson called 
war. The United States need have no dynamite guns to destroy 
hundreds of human lives at one shot ; neither need they build ships to 
carry the destructive weapons of Captain Zalinski, nor any necessity to 
commission officers as dynamiters to go forth on their career of destruc- 
tion. Nay, more. We need not police our cities if we logically carry 



MR. PARNELL IN THE UNITED STATES. 269 

out this doctrine ; preach a crusade of shame to the thieves, burglars, and 
other criminals, instead of resorting to the much-condemned doctrine of 
violence ; do away with force and let shame do the needful work on the 
criminals. For that great criminal, England, who robbed a nation not 
only of her freedom, but of her national wealth, and drove to death 
millions of her people, for this murder and robbery she is only to be 
shamed into discontinuing it. Any attempt, even the faintest resistance on 
the part of the plundered, would be a crime, and would be violence and 
outrage, and, according to the apostles of the doctrine of shame, would 
destroy the country and put it back a century, whatever that phrase 
means ? As if the English enemy was not destroying it hourly ! Many 
of those who preach and try to practice this Utopian doctrine are sincere 
in their views, or at least the great masses who follow these agitators are. 
Irishmen will probably tell us that they believe in force, but that Ireland 
is powerless to resist. Nationalists deny this cowardly and shameful 
falsehood. Men call themselves patriots who publicly preach this 
shameful and degrading statement. Ireland must be a nation of pol- 
troons and cowards were this slavish assertion true. United Ireland tells 
the Irish people that no man can have a rifle without the risk of forfeit- 
ing his liberty. Patriots wish that the British would make the penalty 
death, and the same for agitation, and then national life would be 
purified. These scribblers would make the people a race of curs fitted 
only for the Saxon's whip. A man who cannot keep a rifle and the 
necessary ammunition safe without the British fear of capture, even with 
a death penalty if discovered, will never belong to a nation of freemen. 
If Ireland was in the helpless state these scribes tell the people, there 
would be nothing more certain than that they were a doomed race. For 
the course of shame never can as it never has yet saved a people. Better 
for the Irish race to die out quietly as they would deserve, than to prac- 
tice such folly as agitation, making Ireland ridiculous in the eyes of all 
the statesmen of Europe, wasting their time and money on a movement 
termed national, but which has no more to do with Irish nationality than 
it has in altering the solar and lunar ellipses. 

Mr. Parnell told his hearers in his Madison Square speech that he 
proposed to make the occupiers of the soil its owners. This, he says, is 
to be accomplished by peaceful means, and with as little injury to vested 
interests as possible ; that must mean to buy from the landlords. Let it be 
supposed this were possible, so as to examine into the proposed panacea 
for the poor victimized farmer, who, between agitators and landlords, is 
compelled to suffer. 

The rent-roll of Ireland is about ^20,000,000 yearly. At twenty 
years' purchase the amount needed to buy the land would be the enor- 
mous sum of ^400,000,000 sterling, or $2,000,000,000. The interest 
on this huge sum at three per cent, would amount to ^12,000,000, or 
$60,000,000 annually. This interest should be paid the first year, and its 
proportionate reduction every year. In addition to this sum there would 
be the yearly repayment of the borrowed principal which, in lieu of rent, 
should be paid for more than one generation to the new landlord, the 
British Government. So that the Irish farmer would still continue to 
pay a large yearly sum to the absentee landlord, the London executive ; 
and should he not meet his engagement with that impassive and relentless 
creditor through failure of his crops, cattle plague, or the many causes 
that makes farming unproductive, he would be instantly evicted, his farm 
sold by public auction, or by whatever machinery would be in the bill to 
meet this contingency. His only resource then would be emigration or 
the workhouse. 

But how would this repayment of the purchase loan and its attendant 



270 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

interest affect the small holdings, where three-fourths of the Irish 
agricultural community are crowded into a small space? these small 
occupiers who could not live decently and comfortably even if their small 
farms were given to them free. It would be the height of absurdity to 
say that such a measure, even if it could be accomplished, would bring 
any great boon to these toiling, suffering poor ; and in a very little time 
both themselves and the country would learn that this measure brought 
to them no material change from their normal condition of poverty. 
Now, this is supposing that the British Government could be induced to 
ever guarantee such an enormous sum even on such good security as the 
soil of Ireland. They would naturally fear that their security might slip 
from their grasp, and to think that the most liberal of British tax-payers 
would consent, is only another of the delusions that follow such a course 
of reasoning as, unfortunately, come with moral suasion when it is applied 
to a whole nation, and when, as Mr. Parnell here states, American public 
opinion would be its greatest weapon. Mr. Parnell's weak point in this 
celebrated New York speech is where he tries to contend with Mr. 
Kavanagh's arguments with respect to subdivision and subletting. 
Take, for instance, the free land which Mr. Parnell speaks of, and which 
would, as he tells us, stop this subdivision. Many would be inclined to 
think, and common sense and human instincts bear them out, that this 
very fact of free land — if it could be accomplished — would hasten sub- 
division. Mr. Parnell states that no injurious subdivision would take 
place if they had a free system for the sale of land. But Mr. Parnell 
gives no reason why they would not ; it is a mere assertion ; he states 
that the size of the farm would be regulated by natural causes ; but 
these very causes would not only tend to, but compel subdivision or sub- 
letting. The Irish leader further states that no one would care to buy a 
small farm ; that may be, but this subdivision would not come from buying 
or selling, but through the wish of keeping his family home the farmer 
would subdivide as already pointed out. The blot and infamy of alien 
rule is the destruction of our industries, which brings about the over- 
crowding on the land. Mr. Kavanagh is correct when he states Ireland 
needs larger farms to develop the agricultural interests by scientific 
farming, which in the present condition of the country would be an 
impossibility. Mr. Kavanagh's remedy is emigration, and Mr. Parnell's 
migration from the congested districts to the more fertile lands ; but 
neither of these remedies is meant to affect the large portion of the 
people not engaged in agriculture ; these always seem to be lost sight of, 
but neither of these changes, even if effected, could eventually stop 
emigration. Both Mr. Kavanagh's large farmers and Mr. Parnell's 
migrates would be compelled to subdivide their farms as their families 
increased, and the land would go back to its present condition. The 
remedy is as plain as noonday, but can only be put in practice under 
native government. Establish, as already written in a previous chapter, 
manufacturing industries all over the island, first creating a native market 
by shutting out all foreign goods as soon as Irishmen can make them at 
home. These factories would give employment to the surplus farm 
laborers and the mechanics and idlers of the towns, making the country 
what God and nature intended it should be, one of the richest islands 
in proportion to its size in the universe. Independence would do for 
Ireland what it did for Belgium — develop her manufactures, artistic and 
mechanical, so that Ireland in a few years would be able like Belgium to 
go abroad in search of markets. 

Some years ago the writer was in Glasgow, when a Belgian firm 
successfully competed for the iron girders that span the large dome at 
St. Enoch's railway terminus in that city, which was like sending coals 



MR. PARNELL IN THE UNITED STATES. 27 r 

into Newcastle, for Glasgow is almost the center of the North British iron 
trade, tons of it being used weekly in shipbuilding on the Clyde. A 
British manufacturer, in course of conversation on the subject, said that 
the Belgian firm procured this contract not by the protective tariff alone, 
which originally built up Belgian manufactures, but by the premium 
offered by the Belgian government to successful competitors in foreign 
markets. So wonderful has been the growth of manufactures in Belgium 
that it seems quite phenomenal. This British merchant said that ten 
years previous to that period Belgian cutlery was very inferior to Shef- 
field goods ; at that time British cutlers did not fear Belgian competition. 
But by -bringing over to their country the most skilled workmen to teach 
their people, their cutlery at that time coming into England was well able 
to compete with the best Sheffield make, and their superior skill has been 
growing ever since. When Belgium became independent, and the wise 
King Leopold was chosen head of a parliamentary governed state, he 
influenced his government in the course they have since pursued. The 
Belgium of to-day is spreading out into Africa, colonizing and seeking 
markets for her surplus manufactures. Belgium's area is 11,373 square 
miles, and through her numerous industries she supports a rapidly 
increasing population of 5,853,278, while Ireland, with an area of 32,531 
square miles of the richest land on the globe, has to-day a semi-pauper 
population of 4,500,000 ; and yet the cry is more emigration to increase 
prosperity. Foreign rule and not landlordism is what keeps them and 
forces them into poverty and overshadows and darkens their position as a 
people. The blessed light of freedom and prosperity will never dawn 
upon them until they apply the sharp-cutting ax Force to its roots. 
Agitate how they may, they will still continue to wither 'neath its blight- 
ing influence. 



CHAPTER XX. 

(1880.) 

THE BRITISH "DYNAMITE FIEND " — BLOWS UP THOUSANDS OF WOMEN 
AND CHILDREN IN AN AFRICAN KOPPIE — THE CRUSADE OF SHAME 
IN THE TRANSVAAL. 

Britain's Career in South Africa — Invasion of Zululand — Destruction of the Twenty-fourth 
Regiment at Islandula — Rorke's Drift — Scenes in British Theaters — Song " Here 
Stands a Post " — Re-enforcements Sent to Africa — Sir Garnet Wolseley Sent to Take 
Command — Lord Chelmsford Fights the Victorious Battle of Ulundi — Capture of 
Cetewayo — Invasion of the Transvaal — Suppression of the Boer Republic — Hoisting 
the British Flag in Pretoria — Wolseley's Boast — "This Flag once Raised will Never be 
Lowered" — The Boers Commence a Crusade of Shame — Meeting at Doom Kip — 
Resolutions Passed — British Cavalry around Pretoria — Meeting at Wondersfontein — 
Protesting Against British Rule — Boer Belief in the Justice of the British People — 
Comments in the British Press — War against the Basutos — Wolseley Attacks Seku- 
kina, the Basuto King — Ten Thousand Men, Women, Children, and Babes Seek 
Refuge in a Cave — Pursuit by the British — Gallant Defense of the Basutos — British 
Held at Bay for Three Days — English Writer's Description — The Cave Blown to 
Pieces by Dynamite — Horrible Carnage — Sickening Scenes — Dead Women and Chil- 
dren — Fearful and Atrocious Acts of the British "Dynamite Fiends" — A Scene of 
Horrors too Fearful to Contemplate — Wolseley's Dispatch — The Chief of the 
"Dynamite Fiends" Gloats over the Destruction of the Basutos — Warrant for the 
Arrest of the Boer Leaders — A Replica of Foreign Rule in Ireland — Disarming the 
Remnant of the Basutos — Sham Fight in Pretoria — Impressing the Boers with British 
Prowess — Grand Banquet — Wolseley Declares the Transvaal a Crown Colony — Boers 
Cannot be Trusted — Opinion of the Boer Newspapers. 

While Mr. Parnell was speeding through the towns and vast cities 
of America, preaching his crusade of shaming the British enemy of his 
nation, and trying to create for the advancement of Irish Provincialism 
American opinion in its favor, the British, with restless love for fresh 
conquests whereby they could open up fresh markets for their trade, 
were completely ignoring all "shame," and were planting their flag 
wherever there was to be gained new territory and more plunder. 

Britain is far too practical to think of such folly in her career of de- 
struction as preaching doctrines of shame. She believes in spreading her 
commerce and increasing her markets by the logic of a blow. She still 
clings to the Cromwellian motto, " Put your trust in God, but keep your 
powder dry." At this period of th* world's history she had put forth 
her strong hand, and, ignoring all shame, forcibly seized and retained in 
her numerous scattered possession certain portions of South African 
territory occupied by both white and black races. 

Looking after her material interests and her greed of gain, she invaded 
the territory inhabited by the Zulus, a brave and fierce tribe of Africans 
governed at that time by a king, Cetewayo, a man of great ability for an 
unlettered savage, possessed of heroic and splendid qualities, and with 
a dignity that even captivity could not subdue. 

The British, despising their enemy, marched into his country, and 
paid dearly for their temerity. At Islandula the Twenty-fourth British 
Regiment was surrounded by the Zulus, and though the white men 
fought bravely they were mowed down by the assagais or native spears of 
their fierce assailants. A few men who succeeded in intrenching them- 
selves round a temporary field hospital, under the command of two 

272 



THE BRITISH "DYNAMITE FIEND." 273 

English lieutenants, one belonging to the engineers and the other an 
infantry officer of the line, made a splendid and successful defense at 
Rorke's Drift. 

Vainly did the brave Zulus assail the small British intrenchment. 
They were received with the deadly missiles of the equally brave British 
inside, who were fighting for their lives, which they had justly forfeited 
in thus invading the Zulus' country. A steady, well-directed fire from 
the Snider-Enfield rifle in the hands of the white men was more effec- 
tive than the Zulus' assegais, and yet with what murderous aim could the 
natives send a cloud of those steel-pointed weapons into the British camp ! 
But skill, science, and determination succeeded over savage valor, and 
the Zulus, bringing away their wounded, were compelled to retire, baffled 
in their attack on the small intrenchment. With all its brutality, war 
brings out manly qualities that men are compelled to admire. The Zulus 
fighting for their homes have all true manly sympathy, and their brave 
and rash exposure of their persons in their attack on the British laager 
proved them to be worthy sons of Afric's soil. 

And the few brave white men, who were defending their lives in the 
worst cause men were ever engaged in, — uncalled-for plunder and spolia- 
tion, — gallantly remained faithful and steadfast before the repeated 
charges of their numerous foes. True, they were at bay and compelled 
to fight, but they made a very splendid defense. Two young officers, try- 
ing to bear dispatches for succor, who left the line of the 24th with the 
regimental flag wrapped around one of them, were intercepted by the 
Zulus and slain. 

English artists and painters with English sympathies have covered 
their canvases with scenes depicting in the most heroic manner these 
episodes in British plunder, and of course raised the two officers who 
were slain and the defenders of Rorke's Drift to the dignity of heroes. 
After all, when people come to reason on it, there was nothing very extra- 
ordinary in armed men defending their lives in such an extremity, as 
there was no hope in surrender. The most cowardly of animals will fight 
under such circumstances. A war fever seized upon the British people, 
and to read their newspapers and listen to their conversation one would 
imagine it was the 24th Regiment who cut the Zulus to pieces instead of 
the fact that their unfortunate regiment was wiped out of existence. 

In the theaters — no matter what the subject of the piece that was 
being performed, whether tragedy, comedy, or melodrama — the public 
taste was catered to and the national vanity flattered by celebrating what 
they called British victory. A number of young ladies of the corps-de- 
ballet, dressed as British tars (for no matter what branch of the service 
is engaged in war the Briton believes Jack Tar comes in somewhere), one 
of their leading vocalists carrying a British flag, would appear upon the 
stage. This young lady, striking the staff on which the ensign was fas- 
tened with a thud upon the stage, would then sing a popular ballad 
specially composed for the occasion and heard over Britain at that time 
in every theater or music hall, entitled "There stands a post, touch it if 
you dare" (meaning, it is supposed, the flagstaff and British union jack); 
and the young lady personating the British seaman tossed her head with 
such determination of manner and looked so brave and sang so brave 
that the enthusiastic Briton applauded and came away with the fixed idea 
that he belonged to a nation of heroes, who could beat the world in arms. 
The Ministry hurried out re-enforcements to South Africa. Several 
infantry and three crack cavalry regiments were at once dispatched to 
the scene of operations. Lord Chelmsford, the son of a deceased British 
chancellor, was in command there, but became at this time very unpopular 
in England owing to the fact of what they called his mismanagement of 



274 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the troops and his permitting the Zulus to draw the 24th Regiment into 
such a fatal ambuscade. After the dispatch of the troops to the Cape 
of Good Hope, the Government thought the occasion warranted the send- 
ing out of Sir Garnet Wolseley to take the command and to supersede 
Lord Chelmsford, who was ordered home. So this well-known soldier in 
the British service, England's " great and only," was dispatched to the 
scene of operations. In the meanwhile Lord Chelmsford, receiving large 
British re-enforcements and learning that Wolseley had arrived in Africa 
and was on the way by sea to Durnford to reach the front, hurried his men 
into the field and, forming a solid square of picked troops, armed with 
Gatling guns, fought the decisive battle of Ulundi against the Zulus com- 
manded by Cetewayo — the Zulus with their assegais falling in showers 
near the British square. They died where they charged, close up to the 
British lines. What could the splendid bravery of the Zulu regiments do 
against the phalanx of white men, pouring forth deadly volleys from the 
Gatling guns and no less destructive streams of fire from the rifles of the 
troops ? The British square literally mowed down the daring and reck- 
less Zulus and when the British cavalry made a final dash from out their 
square, the victory was already secured ; a few broken flying Zulus, the 
remnant of that morning's deadly destruction, were all that remained for 
the British horsemen to display their chivalry upon. 

When the "great and only" arrived at Durnford he received the 
news of Chelmsford's victory and shortly after of the capture of 
Cetewayo. 

But Wolseley, having come so far in search of honors, was not to be 
disappointed, so looking about him soon found a favorable pretense for 
invading the Transvaal, a South African Republic inhabited by a brave 
race of white men, descendants of Hollanders, who colonized that por- 
tion of Africa. 

It is a rather remarkable fact, in the face of history, that the British 
have got, among many Europeans, or had until recently, the undeserved 
reputation of being a just people, loving liberty for liberty's sake, and 
wishing to spread that freedom abroad which she is supposed to practice 
at home, while the very opposite is the case. If the British drum beats 
around the world, it is because the said sheepskin was brought there to 
sound the signal for plundering and murdering, and under the cover of 
British interests or some other convenient phrase, they deprive the 
natives of their freedom and their wealth. 

When the " great and only " invaded the Transvaal and took posses- 
sion of the Boer capital Pretoria and raised there the British flag, the 
ensign of conquest, the sturdy Dutch farmers could not and did not 
realize that the British meant to take absolute control and possession of 
their country. Filled so strongly with the idea that the liberty-loving 
English would retire when remonstrated with, the Boers, who were peace- 
able men interested in their business affairs, remonstrated and explained 
and, in fact, requested England's "great and only" general to retire and 
leave them to pursue their course in peace. But Wolseley, to their sur- 
prise and astonishment, absolutely refused, nay, more, he told them that 
they must now consider themselves British subjects, and any refusal to 
obey British laws would be treason against the majesty and dignity of 
the imperial crown and would be punished accordingly. The general 
also told them that wherever the British flag was once raised, over what- 
ever territory or province, it was never lowered again. The " great and 
only " forgot there was such a nation as the " United States of America." 
British officials can have convenient memories. However, Wolseley was 
right in one thing, and that was that the flag was never pulled down in 
any place it once covered as British soil by the crusade of shame, and the 



THE BRITISH "DYNAMITE FIEND." 275 

Boers, not believing it possible that the British people could endorse 
such a high-handed proceeding as was taken by General Wolseley, 
patiently bided their time, expecting liberty-loving England would con- 
demn her general's proceeding. But that nation of hypocrites in their 
dealing with subject races sent a different message to the Boers from the 
one they expected. They assured the people of the Transvaal that their 
country was now part of the British empire, and would receive all the 
blessings which come from living under that glorious flag — that flag that 
for one thousand years braved the battle and the breeze, of which Johnny 
Bull sings so lustily, quite unconscious that the poet who wrote this song 
drew upon his imagination for the fact. 

The Boers soon discovered what the Irish had known for centuries, 
that the loss of their independence was something more than a mere 
sentiment, and material losses followed, as they always do the loss of 
freedom. The Boers grew more and more dissatisfied and the British 
papers said they were influenced by a handful of agitators, who were 
working on the feelings of the Boers for their own purposes. How 
unconsciously the British press supplies satires upon their own institutions! 
Here we have the cause of Irish discontent moved to South Africa. 

But the Boers had one great hope that their demands would be gained 
peaceably, or rather it should be said the Boer leaders had this hope, and 
this was based on the knowledge that England had one great, just states- 
man, a man not only of transcendant ability, but a liberty-loving, just 
man, who, towering in the God-like genius of his great affection for the 
human race over that of his compeers, and in dignified and noble contrast 
to the Tories then in power, — he who loved justice for justice' sake, — had 
raised his voice in sweeping and scathing condemnation of the Tory 
policy in taking over the Transvaal. This great and good statesman 
(according to the superficial cant of the age) was William E. Gladstone, 
the idol of so many Irishmen at the present time of writing and truly the 
"Grand Old Man." 

As the Irish people to-day look to him for succor and hope in the 
fulfillment of his promises to give them back native government, so did 
the Boers of the Transvaal hope that when this venerable statesman came 
back they would get their native rule peaceably restored to them. In the 
meantime the Tory Government was irritating the Boers and the leading 
men found it difficult to restrain them from expressing in some forcible 
manner their indignation at such treatment. 

The Boers held a meeting at a place called Doom Kip on December 
10, 1879. There were present at the meeting 6305 men and 510 wagons. 
The following resolutions were passed at this great gathering : 

" 1. As it has been shown that her Majesty's High Commissioners are 
deaf to justice and right, and it has thus become clear that we shall never 
get back our independence, so cunningly robbed from us, by petition and 
supplication, it is now our decided and earnest demand that the Vice 
President shall at once come forward as State President and take up his 
position at once as well. 

" 2. That the President shall at once convene the Volkraad according 
to the Grondwet. 

" 3. We hereby proclaim that we will never submit to the British Gov- 
ernment, and that we continue emphatically to protest against all procla- 
mations issued by the English authorities. 

" 4. We desire nothing else than our independence, and we solemnly 
declare to be prepared to sacrifice our lives and shed our blood for it. 

" 5. We demand to have our Government reinstated as soon as pos- 
sible according to the Grondwet of the South African Republic. 



276 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

" 6. It is therefore the humble but earnest wish of the people that our 
national committee shall as soon as possible take the requisite steps for 
the recovery of our independence. 

" 7. Should, however, the committee know of a better method, it is our 
humble but earnest wish that the committee should at once submit such 
method to the consideration of the people." 

The Vice President referred to was Mr. Paul Kruger, who was so 
elected by the Volkraad just before its dissolution by the British. This 
gentleman had on more than one occasion declared that he would have 
nothing to do with any movement that invoked an appeal to arms. 

During this time the British cavalry picketed about the Boer capital, 
Pretoria, became most insolent to the Dutch people. Their attitude was 
most offensive and overbearing, as troops usually are in a conquered 
country. Irishmen have plenty of experience of this kind up to the 
present hour. 

Another great and most important meeting was held by the Boers to 
form a working committee and organize to see what was to be done. 
This meeting took place at Wondersfontein. Mr. Paul Kruger, the late 
Vice President of the Transvaal, spoke at this meeting. He said : 

" My friends, the way you propose to take leads to life or death. 
England is a strong power and our strength is only insignificant. You 
wave your hats, but when the strife comes will you not say then that your 
business calls you away, that your farms require your presence ? 

"I also want my independence restored ; but you advocate no small 
matter when you cry out without any reservation : ' Yes, for we will 
fight."' 

Mr. Joubert called on the chairman to elect foremen of the meeting. 
The foremen were appointed and the meeting took a recess. On reas- 
sembling the next day, one of the foremen, addressing the meeting, said : 

41 Chairman, Gentlemen, and Members of the Boer Committee. 

"Gentlemen: After having yesterday received your report, we 
hereby wish to thank you heartily for the welfare and happiness of our 
country and people. 

" We now wish humbly that Mr. Joubert and foremen of the people's 
committee hold a consultation." 

The committee then adopted ten resolutions with those adopted by 
the foremen : 

" The people of the South African Republic made known their will 
last Friday and now proceed to carry out the same resolution. 

" The time for memorials to the English Government is past. In that 
way no deliverance is possible. 

" The officials of her Majesty the Queen of England have by their 
untrue and false representation closed the door to her Majesty and to 
Parliament. This is their responsibility. The people have done what 
they could. Again and again would they approach the Queen of Eng- 
land, for the people believe as certainly as the sun shines, that if the 
Queen of England and the English nation knew that a free people were 
oppressed here they would never allow it. England has been the protector 
of liberty everywhere and would also protect our liberty, which is now 
being violated by her Majesty's officials in South Africa, who continue 
to defend the necessity of the annexation, conceal the truth, and smother 



THE BRITISH "DYNAMITE FIEND." 277 

our voice. We cannot, therefore, address ourselves to England. Nobody 
there replies to us. It is therefore, that we, the people of the South 
African Republic, proceed to resolve : 

" 1. That the people of the South African Republic have never been, 
and do not wish to be Her Majesty's subjects, and that everyone who 
speaks of us as rebel, is a slanderer. 

" 2. The people desire that the Government of the South African 
Republic, whose functions have been stopped, shall resume the same as 
soon as possible. 

" 3. The people desire that the Volkraad shall be convened as soon as 
possible. 

"4. The people desire to show to friend and foe that they wish to avoid 
everything in the way of bloodshed and violence, and therefore expect 
their Volkraad to take such steps as will make possible a peaceful solution 
of the difficulties with the English Government. 

" 5. The people expect from the Volkraad in furtherance of that object 
in the first place a procedure or law on the following points : 

" a. That it is the right of the present inhabitants of the Transvaal to 
become the protectors of the laws of the country. 

" 10. The people declare by God's help they desire to have a strong 
Government for the South African Republic, respect for the law, the 
development and advancement of the country. They promise man for 
man to co-operate for that purpose and to defend their Government till 
death, so help us God Almighty. 

" This done by us the foremen elected by the people, in the name of the 
people of the South African Republic at Wondersfontein on this 15th day 
of December, 1879. 

" Signed by thirty-two foremen." 

The Boer resolution which is in italics, and the tenth or last resolution, 
is recommended to Irishmen's best consideration, now that the crusade of 
shame has proved abortive. 

The people of the Transvaal were rudely awakened from their dream 
of English justice. They learned a little later the bitter truth, that the 
English people, even the English democracy, love liberty only for them- 
selves. 

The British press, commenting on the resolutions passed at the great 
Boer meeting, said " They were mere rhodomantade ; there was no real 
purpose in these resolutions." Such has been ever Britain's reply to 
prayers and entreaties ; as this history progresses they will be found open 
to hear these resolutions when backed up by manly deeds in a more 
amiable and conciliatory mood. 

After the defeat of the brave but unfortunate Zulus, the other African 
tribes felt that their subjection to the skilled force of the invading Briton 
was but a question of time. There was a noble chivalry in the savage 
breasts of the Basutos that would not permit them to succumb to the 
British without striking a blow. Their Chief Sekukina was the William 
Wallace and Owen Roe of Southern Africa, an intrepid warrior and a 
skillful barbarian in the practice of the rude warfare known to the tribes. 
He was beloved by his people, and his dusky breast throbbed with rage 
at the wanton cruelties practiced on the natives by the more savage and 
barbarian British. His proud soul, full of manly aspirations, would not 
tamely surrender even to overwhelming force ; so summoning his tribe 
around him he told them he meant to contest every inch of his native soil 
against the bloodthirsty invader, and that their last rampart of freedom 
should be the bodies of his braves. His resolution met with approval by 



278 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

his tribe, and chiefs and clansmen said they would die as become men, 
but wouid never surrender. 

The refined cruelty and cunning of the British in the wars against 
mankind to enforce their rule upon them was exemplified in the war 
against the Basutos. As they employed the North American Indian to 
aid them during the American War of the Revolution to murder and scalp 
the wives and children of the gallant colonists, as to-day they use the 
fanaticism of the Orangemen to strike at their brethren in Ireland, so they 
made use of tribal disputes and induced the Zwaris, a South African tribe, 
at feud with the Basutos, to be their allies in their campaign against that 
noble savage Sekukina. 

The Basutos were defeated and driven back by General Wolseley. 
Sekukina, after contesting every foot, sought refuge in one of the great 
caves or koppies of the country. Ten thousand men, women, children, 
and babes at their mother's breast entered this cave, which became their 
tomb. For three days the British were held at bay before Sekukina's 
stronghold. But God's gift of intelligence and scientific skill was used to 
destroy his creatures. A mine was sunk and charged with dynamite to 
complete the destruction of the gallant Basutos. These British dynamite 
fiends had no respect for the babes, the children, or the women. 

William Howard Russell, the English war correspondent, who was 
present, described the assault in Sekukina's koppie ; here are some para- 
graphs from his lengthened letter. He thus describes the cave where 
the Basutos sought refuge : 

" It is a remarkable specimen of the strange geological formation 
called koppies by the Dutch, in which this part of the Transvaal abounds. 
Viewed from the outside it appears to be an ordinary koppie, but it is, 
perhaps, one of the most singular cavernous structures in the world. 
With a vast honeycombed interior, full of galleries and passages, leading 
into large chambers, with apertures opening out through chinks and 
clefts — natural loopholes and casemates — and in one place there is a 
chasm, the depth of which no living man has sounded, yet which is said 
to contain water. This koppie is, in fact, like a vast tortoise shell, with 
partitions and galleries around. 

" By degrees, from six till half-past, along the serrated rugged outline 
there flashed out from the brushwood more numerous sparks of light as 
the sun's rays fell on the assegai sheaves of the fantastic barbarians, who 
were about to engage a foe as cruel and ferocious as themselves. 

" Well, then, at half-past ten the fighting koppie in which Sekukina 
enshrined his faith belonged practically to Queen Victoria, but inside its 
stony bowels was still hidden a band of desperate resolute men, of women 
and children, wounded and of dead — a fearful combination. When next 
day the resources of science were brought to bear on the hard rocks, and 
gun cotton or dynamite — perhaps both — in the skillful hands of Captain 
McGregor, tore open the caves or filled them with a rain of broken 
boulders, and the madness of thirst and hunger and the stench of corpses 
came upon the survivors in that dreadful charnel house, there must have 
been an accumulation of horrors which it would not be easy to match in 
the records of human misery. 

" But Sekukina was still at large. Clarke's spies declared he was still 
in the caves alone — one still higher up the gorge than that which he 
occupied when the fighting began — and immediately steps were taken to 
seize him. 



THE BRITISH "DYNAMITE FIEND." 279 

" No Highlander in by-gone days — no follower of the ancient Lochiels, 
of the Farquharsons of old, or the Forbes of Newe— could display more 
devotion to their chief than these black fellows to Sekukina. They died 
in the koppie. When all was over they sought death almost certain in 
attempts to break through our lines, driven desperate, as they were, by 
thirst and starvation, because he told them not to surrender ; and 
they guarded the secret of his hiding place most tenaciously, coming 
out of their caves to give themselves up to their mortal enemies in 
the hope of decoying the pursuers by the assurance that the king was not 
there." 

The writer remembers once when traveling through the Scotch 
Trossachs meeting a party of tourists, among whom was a British officer 
who had been present at this attack on Sekukina's koppie. His description 
of the dynamite explosion and the number of women and children 
destroyed, which amounted to thousands, was so sickening in its studied 
brutality — for he spoke of the Basutos as if they were vermin — that it 
was revolting to any but the most callous to listen to. Where, where 
was public opinion to shame and denounce this outrage on civilization 
and humanity ? Was there no legislative body in Europe to condemn 
this brutal warfare ? No, not one. If this is war, and who can doubt it 
when civilization is dumb, and when this very act is trumpeted forth to 
the world as an act to glory in, why do these British dynamite fiends 
assail the character of those people who will not submit tamely to their 
brutal savagery ? 

Why should not Britain's enemies do likewise ? If an explosion of 
such a terrific nature took place in London, and women and children 
were even in hundreds destroyed, humanity would stand aghast. Is 
there an equal law for these brutal deeds ? Has England got a pre- 
scribed right divine to murder ? Can she burn cabins in Glenbeig, hurl 
them down in Bodyke, shoot on unarmed crowds in Mitchelstown ? 
Blow up Sepoys in India from the cannon's mouth, carrying her punish- 
ment beyond the grave — for she knew the superstition of these men ? 
Hurl death and destruction by use of dynamite against the hapless 
Basutos, sending thousands of men, women, and babes to eternity? 
And he who lifts a finger against her, whose race for generations 
she has murdered in every species of ingenious torture, becomes 
a criminal. Out upon such a doctrine! As nations have no hereafter, 
it is to hoped that this hoary-headed criminal, drunk with the blood of 
nations, shall soon meet that just retribution which is sure to come 
upon her. 

The London Times printed a dispatch of Wolseley's ; speaking of the 
destruction of the brave savage Basutos, he said : " The destruction 
of Sekukina's stronghold and of his power, and the breaking up of the rob- 
ber clans who looked up to him as king, cannot fail to have a quieting 
effect on the native mind generally in South Africa, and will, I am sure, 
go far toward settling all native difficulties in the Transvaal." 

Hear this, oh prophets of Home Rule, and crusaders of shaming 
your country's foe by exposing his misdeeds ! Hear this British general 
proudly gloating before mankind that the brutal dynamite murders of 
these women and babes will have a tranquilizing effect upon the natives ! 
Surely, for in the grave there is peace. The chiefs of the British 
murder conspiracies do not deny their complicity in crime, but vaunt 
their savagery as if 'twere a deed of valor — this brutal massacer of these 
helpless people. 

The Boers' meeting caused some uneasiness in British official circles. 
A warrant was issued for the arrest of Paul Kruger, and on January 12 



280 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the British press in Africa was informed — the same news was cabled to 
Britain — that the Transvaal Government had arrested Messrs. Pretorius 
and Bok, chairman and secretary of the Boers' committee, on a charge 
of high treason. 

As the British murder conspiracy in Ireland styles itself the Irish 
Government, the nest of usurpers that settled in Pretoria took to them- 
selves the title of the Transvaal Government, and were about to inaugurate 
in the Transvaal all the horrors which their infamous system in Ireland 
has entailed upon that suffering land. This arrest for high treason in 
South Africa is transferred from Dublin or Cork to Pretoria. 

The Boers were still as inclined for peace as some Irishmen who 
have had long experience of the folly, but unlike the Boers at that 
period, the Irish had bitter and convincing reasons to know the hope- 
lessness of agitation to solve such issues. The Boers clung to the 
hope of British justice, and believed in shaming the British invader 
from their country. How like an article in an Irish Provincialist paper 
this reads : 

The Volkstein, a patriot organ of Pretoria, in a leader, strongly urges 
the Boers to do nothing that will give Sir Garnet Wolseley any excuse to 
attack them, but to quietly disperse and await the departure of his excel- 
lency and the troops, meanwhile persisting in their attitude of passive 
resistance and refusing to pay taxes. 

The disarming of the remnant of the Basuto tribe was proceeded 
with ; they were requested to loyally surrender their arms to British 
magistrates. 

There was held in Pretoria a review and sham fight, to impress upon 
the Boers by military display Britain's all-conquering power. Sir Garnet 
AVolseley invested Commander D'Arcy with the Victoria cross for 
bravery, probably for storming the Basuto koppie. 

At a banquet held in Pretoria, at which, after their career of blood, 
the British officers and officials sat down to feast, Sir Garnet Wolseley 
declared that the Transvaal should be henceforward considered a Crown 
colony, and that it would be unsafe to trust the Boers with executive 
functions. The arrest of Mr. Pretorius caused much indignation among 
the Dutch farmers, but as yet it had taken no shape ; it was simply a 
crusade of shame. 

Sir Garnet Wolseley, speaking again on the Boer question, said : " The 
Boers will see the futility of resistance and see the advantage of a State 
Government under the British flag. 

" Her Majesty's Ministers have anxiously waited since the annexation 
of the Transvaal for a cessation of the agitation which has been carried 
on by a few designing agitators to fulfill the promises they made. 

" How can they receive a liberal constitution, when from fifteen hun- 
dred to two thousand men of the High Veldt are talking sedition and 
coquetting with rebellion ?" 

English usurpation asserts itself in the same hypocritical language 
everywhere. Of course General Wolseley said to the Boers, as others 
say to the Irish, it is folly to resist ; and he speaks of the advantage of 
living under the British flag. In what a benighted condition the nations 
of the earth are in who do not enjoy that ineffable blessing! The liberal 
constitution which Sir Garnet talks of is a Crown Colony's rule, which 
simply means a despotism. 

The Transvaal Volkstein said, speaking of Wolseley in pursuance of 
the crusade of shame in Africa : 

" If he does it will be of no use. Will he then use force ? Will he 
incur the terrible responsibility of forever dividing the two white races 
of South Africa into two hostile camps ? Will he undertake to put the 



THE BRITISH "DYNAMITE FIEND." 281 

whole of South Africa in a blaze ? Will his hand make forever impossible 
the future union of South Africa ? We hope not. We trust his excel- 
lency will refrain from carrying nameless misery to all South Africa by a 
forcible perpetration of an act at which the whole world would cry 
1 shame!'" 

This digression is made from the Irish question to point to a perti- 
nent case nearly similar to Ireland's, leaving the sturdy Dutch farmers 
to try the effects of their crusade of shame, which they soon found a 
crusade of folly. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

(1878-80.) 

THE NEW DEPARTURE. 

Position of Irish Parties in the United States — Opportunism — Negotiations with Parnell — 
Platform Accepted — Irish Opinion — Irish-American Views — The Men in the Gap — 
Real Opinions Withheld — Provincial Legislators — Moral Force and Moral Suasion — 
Letter of Mr. Webb, Home Rule Treasurer — Degrading Doctrines — Logical Con- 
clusions — Irishmen and Cornishmen — Disrupting the Kingdom — A Mere Con- 
spiracy — Joseph Mazzini and Italy — Statue in Central Park — Apostle of the Dagger — 
Wendell Philips and Ireland — Orsini's Conspiracy — Paris Explosion — Napoleon the 
Third and the Austrian Ambassador — War with Austria — Freedom of Italy — No 
Opportunism for the Italians — Captain McGregor, the British Dynamiter — Wolseley 
Stealing on the Sleeping Egyptians — Honorable Warfare — Bombardment of Alex- 
andria — Killing Women and Children — British Hanging Juries — Cant of the Age — 
Irishmen and Britons — Russian Nihilists and their Country's Flag — Literature of 
Ireland — False Teachings of To-day — Good Diplomacy — John Mitchell and Agita- 
tion — "Compound Vengeance" — Irishmen in British Dungeons — False Policy — 
" Irishmen Gain Nothing by Deceiving and Cheating One Another" — Mr. Parnell on 
Fenianism — A True Revolutionary Movement — Blighting Influence of Cowardly 
Teachings. 

The position of Irish parties in the United States when Mr. Parnell 
arrived in America to preach his crusade of shaming Britain was almost 
altogether in his favor. 

After the fiasco and failure to completely countermand the order for 
insurrection in 1867 the close of that year found the home organization 
completely demoralized. The disintegrating influence of Stephens' 
refusal to fight in 1865 left the country in no condition to meet the enemy 
in the field in 1867. The spirit of faction, which was unfortunately 
rampant in the United States, had secured a foothold at home. The 
men, knowing there had been gross mismanagement and that the affairs 
of the organization were in confusion, too often unjustly attached blame 
to the wrong people. There was for a time a complete smash, and the 
bonds of discipline were broken and destroyed. 

Mankind has had an opportunity of seeing this feeling displayed when 
Bazaine surrendered Metz. The bitter feelings of the French officers 
and soldiers and their cry of treason were something like the Irish at the 
close of the year 1867. Angry, and sometimes unjust, they blamed every 
leader for the contemptible attempt at insurrection. 

The National organization, in Ireland and America, however, survived 
the disasters of 1867. Changes which were deemed necessary were made 
in both, but the policy of the leaders was the continued old cry, Prepare ! 
prepare ! After years of weary waiting it was the self-same echo ; there 
was no apparent choice but wait. Hundreds of the best men in Ireland 
stood aside disgusted at the inactive policy. They could do nothing to 
aid a movement whose watchword was to wait for an imaginary time to 
come, which time was to come of itself, not to be hastened or brought 
about as in the case of other nations similarly circumstanced. 

The organization in America was controlled by honest and patriotic 
men, but, looking at the vastness of the undertaking, they were utterly 
incapable. They had not the ability to meet the exigencies of the situ- 
ation. With the exception of the Catalpa rescue no action was attempted. 
They were not men of sufficient resources to strike out in a new path except 

282 



THE NEW DEPARTURE. 283 

in theory. They were in no way lacking in bravery or devotion to Ireland; 
for the salvation of their country they would have freely sacrificed their 
lives. But they were wedded to old ideas and held antiquated notions, 
which were becoming fossilized by the rapid march of science. 

The revolutionary movement at home as elsewhere became an oppor- 
tunist organization — the opportunity was supposed to come to them 
unsought. When Mr. Parnell began his obstructive policy in the enemy's 
Parliament, and was attacked by Mr. Butt and his followers for so doing, 
it drew the attention of a number of Nationalists to Mr. Parnell and his 
new active policy, and more especially the Nationalist leaders in the 
United States gradually came round to the conclusion that an alliance 
in support of Mr. Parnell's new Parliamentary policy would be a wise 
course in the interests of Ireland. 

A change from the policy of opportunism, — which was an idea, and 
necessitated waiting, — to that of becoming active agitators, had a charm for 
many in this free land, and by degrees fresh recruits joined Mr. Parnell's 
ranks. Several of these held to the belief that the young tribune when he 
discovered Parliamentary agitation useless would, like Wolfe Tone, take a 
more practical stand. His speeches on the Irish question had a manly 
ring, and the great majority of the people believed that he inherited the 
determination and valor of the American seaman who beat the British on 
the sea. But a few years in that lazar house for Irishmen the enemy's 
Parliament destroyed all these hopes, and he is, alas, to-day a pure West 
Briton and his party the mere tail of a British faction. 

Provincialists keep on continually preaching the cowardly doctrine 
that Ireland is a disarmed nation. This may be so in a measure, but not 
as much so as these timid people think, who by their waste of the public 
funds in talk are depriving the nation of receiving additional weapons of 
destruction. To point out continually to the people their incapacity to 
take the field instead of endeavoring to remedy the evil is both unpa- 
triotic and cowardly. 

The Irish-American leaders at this time were honest and sincere 
patriots, but their training and mental caliber did not qualify them to 
lead a revolution. All the men of superior ability had long since ceased 
active work in Ireland's interests. The then leaders decided on opening 
negotiations with Mr. Parnell, to place before him certain propositions 
which if accepted he could have the support of the American organization 
and also if they could possibly influence it the assistance of the sister 
movement at home. 

The opposition offered by Mr. Putt to Mr. Dillon's motion at the 
Dublin conference naturally led these American leaders to think that Mr. 
Parnell and his friends were men of advanced patriotic opinions. Shortly 
after the conference in 1878 these propositions were sent, and it is easy to 
see the judgment and ability of the men conducting them when it is found 
that this delicate negotiation was printed in the public press before the 
Nationalists in Ireland or Mr. Parnell had time to decide on its accept- 
ance. The New York Herald contained this communique, supplied by 
one of the ablest of the Irish-American leaders of that year: 

"The following is a copy of the dispatch cabled to Dublin yesterday 
and signed by men who will be accepted as representatives of the 
advanced Irish National party in the United States. It is addressed to 
Mr. Parnell and his political friends, but before reaching them it will be 
submitted to a number of representative Nationalists in Dublin for their 
approval. 

" 'The Nationalists here will support you on the following conditions: 

" 'First. Abandonment of the federal demand and substitution of a 
general declaration in favor of self-government. 



284 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

" 'Second. Vigorous agitation of the land question on the basis of 
peasant proprietary, while accepting concessions tending to abolish 
arbitrary evictions. 

" 'Third. Exclusion of all sectarian issues from the platform. 

" 'Fourth. Irish members to vote together on all imperial and home 
questions, adopting an aggressive policy and energetically resisting coercive 
legislation. 

" 'Fifth. Advocacy of all struggling nationalities in the British Empire 
and elsewhere. 

" 'An answer to the above dispatch is expected in a day or two, when 
the Nationalists will decide what form their action will take.' " 

This extraordinary document bears on the face of it, to every thinking 
man who has had time and opportunity to study the Irish question, the 
utter incompetency as a statesman of the man or men who penned it, and 
shows of what intellectual capacity were the Irishmen who were conduct- 
ing the affairs of the Nationalists at that time in the United States. 

The propositions from the Irish-American Nationalists were to be 
placed before the council in Dublin ; and after they had thought out and dis- 
cussed the merits of the New York policy it was to be submitted to Mr. 
Parnell. The framers of this treaty with the Provincialists did not give 
either Mr. Parnell or the Dublin Nationalists any time to digest the newly 
proffered alliance, but rushed precipitately into print and gave the whole 
transaction to the world, almost as soon as the message left New York for 
Dublin. 

Is it any wonder that Ireland continues an enslaved nation when men 
who are ignorant of the first principles of statesmanship either climb or 
crawl to a position of leadership in the national cause? Ireland's curse 
has been that for years in both Provincial and National movements she has 
been too often represented by intriguers and conspirators ; but it is not 
conspiracy against the foe that is practiced. These vain, weak, and incom- 
petent people conspire to destroy the reputation and standing of men of 
some ability and undoubted sterling honesty toward their country whom 
they consider rivals. These acts of intrigue disgust honest men and drive 
them outside of the National ranks, while the great mass of the people 
with singleness of purpose, having no object in view but to redeem their 
nation from destruction and decay, cannot understand why these men are 
not working in the ranks of their country's patriots. Oh! that the 
Infinite would raise up for Ireland a man with ability and determination 
allied to social and financial position — the last is absolutely necessary to 
cleanse out Ireland's Augean stable of the charlatans and incompetents 
who are preying on the vitals of a godlike and noble cause. 

Numbers of Nationalists both in Ireland and Britain repudiated the 
new policy, and but for the magnified opinion held in Ireland of the 
ability of the men who promulgated it the repudiation would have been 
unanimous. 

The new departure, as this negotiation was called by its originators, 
built up Mr. Parnell's movement, for without the help of the Nationalists 
it could never have been a success as to finance or organization. The 
American leaders did not fully comprehend the nature of the alli- 
ance they had made; international politics formed no portion of their 
studies; thoroughly honest, no doubt, in their devotion to Ireland, but as 
thoroughly incompetent for the positions they occupied, they had stulti- 
fied themselves and the principles they were supposed to represent. With 
the promise of future greatness as an Irishman which Mr. Parnell then dis- 
played, an alliance with him on certain defined national principles might 
have been very proper. He appeared at that period and many years after 
to have that latent fire in him which gave Ireland a Wolfe Tone, a Lord 



THE NEW DEPARTURE. 285 

Edward, an Emmet, a Davis, and a Mitchell, and many Nationalists 
thought that he would emerge from the ranks of the Provincialists and, 
like Thomas Davis in 1843, tell Irishmen that a treatise on artillery was 
the literature proper for patriots to study. But the absurd series of propo- 
sitions contains not one National resolution. Mr. Butt or Mr. Mitchell 
Henry might have drafted them. No one would think that a National 
brain could conceive or a Nationalist pen indite such silly trash, and term it 
a new departure. The first resolution was, no doubt, considered the piece 
de resistance by the gentleman who penned it. There was nothing in this 
federal demand that was in any way different from advocating self- 
government in the enemy's Parliament. The principles laid down by the 
federal Dublin Home Rule conference of 1873 was as full and broad for 
the internal government of Ireland as anything Mr. Parnell or the most 
advanced — if that term can be used to Provincialists — of the "obstruc- 
tionists" could possibly formulate. A Nationalist leader if he knew the 
first principles of his creed should know that it is not the Provincialist's 
platform for the self-government of Ireland that Nationalists object to; 
both Mr. Butt and Mr. Parnell's parties laid these down so broad and 
well defined that they approached very near an independent government, 
very closely approaching the power of an Irish republic; but it is the 
delusion and corruption which Provincialist teaching creates among the 
people when they are taught that this Will-o'-the-wisp, an independent 
Parliament and Ministry, can be wrung from the invader by any kind of 
parliamentary efforts or any possible peaceful methods — against which 
Nationalists have always protested. They know that the enemy's interests 
are seriously bound up in his possession of the plunder of the Irish nation, 
and the suppression of all possibility of raising up a commercial and 
manufacturing rival so close to his shores compels him to strain the 
power of what he calls the whole empire sooner than give Ireland inde- 
pendent control of her destinies, as the Federalists demanded in 1873 
and the Parnellites since. This power of the whole empire on examination 
is confined to the occupying forces in Ireland, and a small army corps, 
which would drain Britain. If Ireland cannot defeat these if she really 
became earnest as a nation in the struggle for freedom she is not worthy 
of independence. It is a sad fact that the greatest power which keeps 
Ireland in slavery, and greater than the force of the whole British army, is 
the Provincial movements; no matter how patriotic in intention the masses 
may be they are helping the enemy in his war of extermination, which 
never ceases. As for the leaders, they probably start out with pure inten- 
tions, but with a crude and imperfect knowledge of the issue, and they 
end by becoming politicians in the enemy's ranks, corrupt and time-serv- 
ing, trying to continue their Provincialist swindle as long as they can find 
dupes to make it pay. 

Ireland needs a public as well as a secret movement, but it must be a 
National movement, not a Provincial one. She should not recognize her 
brutal invader by sending any delegates to the enemy's Parliament, but 
should keep these men at home. The public movement should be the means 
of propagating the national creed: Ireland an independent nation ; and 
when the enemy sends Irishmen to prison it should not be for a question 
of how much rent any man was to pay, or other trumpery charges, but for 
boldly advocating the doctrine of independence. Evictions, which are acts 
of war, should be resisted with rifles, revolvers, pikes, shells, and every 
instrument of destruction. The secret movement should not be one of 
perpetual organization, but one of perpetual action. The enemy's war of 
extermination should be met by a war of retaliation and destruction. 
Nations that are free, have all gone through this agony of blood before 
they were rewarded with the blessings of peace and independence. The 



286 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

heroes of Lexington, Bunker Hill, and the sufferings of the terrible and 
bitter winter in Valley Forge gave to this great republic the Star-Spangled 
Banner and all the happiness and prosperity which it symbolizes. Ire- 
land is dying under an opiate delivered by the Gladstonians, Parnellites, 
and Balfourites. While these are quarreling over the slumbering nation, 
is there none to arouse her from the lethargy, which will end in death if 
the manhood of her ancient race does not come at once to the rescue? 

The leading spirit in America, who was conducting what he called the 
new departure, sought every possible publicity to emphasize his opinions 
before those with whom he was in negotiation had any time or oppor- 
tunity to come to any decision. It was rather a novel way to conduct the 
affairs of a nation; and it is no wonder that Ireland is so sunk in poverty 
and degradation, when it is only from the ranks of weak, incompetent 
men she can find leaders to champion her cause. Not content with giv- 
ing publicity to the dispatch sent via the Nationalists to Mr. Parnell, this 
gentleman sought by a series of interviews with leading Irishmen to 
influence the decision of the men in Dublin, all of which he published. 
He commenced by interviewing himself; he says: 

"If we are ever to be properly understood by the world, and especially 
that portion of it which is inimical to England, we must secure the 
public voice of the country by electing men to Parliament and to the local 
municipal bodies who will not misrepresent us. 

' 'There is no use sending men to the British Parliament to beg, but we 
can send them there to protest before the world against England's right 
to govern Ireland, and when all is ripe we can command our representatives 
to withdraw fro7ii the British Parliament and meet in Ireland." 

This is pure Provincialist teaching; the very fact of sending delegates 
to the British Parliament is an admission of Britain's right to govern Ire- 
land. The Irish people should no more send representatives to London 
than they should to Paris or Berlin. The true way that Nationalists should 
protest is by some sort of action, and by keeping their delegates at home. 
As to "commanding" their representatives to withdraw, this gentleman 
reckoned without his host. The entrance to Parliament has been to Irish 
Provincialists like Aladdin's visit to the magic cave ; there opens up to 
their vision such beautiful fruit that they are lost in the contemplation of 
these personal treasures and forget their mission, or remember it at 
intervals to learn its complete folly. Arguing in a den of wolves for a flock 
of sheep is not more ridiculous. If quadrupeds were gifted with speech, 
and possessed the same instincts, the sheep would reveal better judgment 
than Irish Provincialists and their former aiders and abettors, weak and 
incompetent National leaders. 

The interview continues thus: 

"Have you seen the resolutions cabled to Mr. Parnell?" 

"Certainly. The conditions therein named are the only ones in which 
the advanced Nationalists here will support Mr. Parnell and his friends." 

Mr. John J. Breslin was interviewed and said: 

"I am entirely in favor of the proposition forwarded to Mr. Parnell by 
cable, and think it is necessary to prevent Ireland from being misrepre- 
sented before the world. . . At the same time I think the Irish Nation- 
alists here should not relax their preparations for active work for one 
moment, for by aggressive and active work alone ca?i we ultimately succeed." 

A prominent military man whose connection with the Fenian movement 
in the past was very close, but who has special reasons for withholding his 
name, said : 

"I am strongly in favor of the proposed alliance with Mr. Parnell and 
his party if they will accept the very reasonable co/idition we sent them 
by cable yesterday. At the same time I am in favor of vigorous military 



THE NEW DEPARTURE. 287 

preparations, so that we can avail ourselves of any opportunity that may 
turn up." 

Mr. O'Donovan Rossa said: 

"We shall be dead before long, and I want to see something done that 
will hurt England before we go. . . I want to make her feel that Irish 
vengeance is something to be feared." 

When the "new departure" became an accomplished fact, and when 
Mr. Parnell accepted its terms and adopted its platform, then was removed 
to a more remote distance the hope of fighting the foe, and for the future 
guerrilla warfare or any kind of force would be compelled to wait on the 
exigencies of the agitation. This may not have been originally intended, 
but it was the only possible ending to such an alliance, and events that have 
transpired since prove this fact. Had the organization been engaged in 
active revolutionary work in Ireland, and especially in Britain, as it should 
have been, this alliance would have been impossible. It was no fault of 
the men at home that this was not the case ; the self-elected officials, who 
had been accustomed to power and any personal advantages which might 
arise therefrom, had grown rusty and enervated, they abused the ears of 
the Irish-Americans on one side and their own people on the other, and 
nothing but actual work could break the spell they wove round the home 
movement. 

This alliance turned revolutionary circles organized for fight into 
League clubs, and but for the cohesion which a secret movement gives 
in concentrating power they might have dissolved into public branches of 
the League, for any revolutionary work dreamt of was too sporadic to 
have any permanent results. 

This perpetual cry of being understood before the world is a lamen- 
table drawback to Irish freedom. To gain this overvalued and consider- 
ably overrated assistance Irish leaders sacrifice the substance for the 
shadow. What can this public opinion do for Ireland. It is a myth, 
when applied to the restoration of a nation's independence. It has a 
certain value, no doubt, but nations will weary of a country which does 
nothing but keep pouring out her grievances and exposing her wrongs; 
they get sick of this perpetual whine, and no self-help tried to 
remedy it. 

A public national movement would arrest the attention of mankind, 
for it would appeal to their patriotism, but a provincial movement is 
nothing more than the internal politics of a nation, and not an issue 
between two distinct peoples. 

When countries settle their quarrels without going to war it is by moral 
force, not moral suasion, that is, the force which both disputants can bring 
to bear in the event of peaceful negotiations failing, and one or other, or 
perhaps both, give way sooner than face the probable disastrous conse- 
quences of refusal. The Alabama dispute was an illustration of this prin- 
ciple; sooner than face the enormous military and naval power displayed 
by this glorious republic during the war of rebellion Britain grew 
alarmed and felt that her interests compelled her to appease the United 
States in preference to braving the fearful risks of war. 

But what consequences can Ireland threaten England with in the event 
of refusal? Dread of insurrection alone, or else some species of destruc- 
tion, which compelled her to yield minor, and in a measure sentimental, 
grievances in the past. Parliamentary agitation is doing its best »to 
destroy fhat power, which is the only thing that can make British statesmen 
even listen to their plaints. They are seeking to get public opinion of the 
world to take the place of physical power. Was there ever such unheard 
of folly? Is Ireland a nation of sentimentalists who are filled with the 
glories of the past and mere dreamers of independence, men who will do 



288 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

nothing practical to give their country freedom. This sympathy and pub- 
lic opinion Poland has had for generations, and what benefit has it been 
to her? Do Irishmen think that any nation is so Quixotic as to go to 
war to free Ireland? Such ideas are unworthy of a great race. They are 
simply absurd. Strike Britain and the nations of the earth will know what 
it means, and even if they denounce the method you are compelled in self- 
defense to pursue — for always recollect Ireland is reducing her population 
on the average every year by fifty thousand souls, the result of England's 
demoniac silent war — continue to strike ! strike ! Don't wait to count your 
losses, go on with the work. And when done let your Nationalists of 
America publicly endorse it, not as in the recent past denouncing what they 
were in full sympathy with. There is nothing more despicable than for 
a Nationalist to go upon the public platform and denounce the result of 
the work he planned in the secrecy of the council chamber, and call this 
diplomacy. Men can be silent on these questions when necessary, but to 
denounce them — never. This public approval could not of course be so 
well expressed at home. Still men there have been more free in their 
expressions of joy at certain results than would be expected considering 
the consequences of those expressed opinions under the enemy's flag. 
How confidently the gentleman who heads the interviews speaks of com- 
manding the members to leave the House of Commons and meet in 
Ireland. 

The Irish Nationalists have created a Frankenstein over which they 
have no control. The Provincialist movement has grown beyond their 
authority. True, if they withdraw their support it is certain to go to pieces 
even without the enemy, who can strike down their peaceful combinations 
whenever he chooses to put forth his strength, and which he is likely to 
do this winter (1887). If the National element in America had not been 
its pillars it would have had but slender props to support it. It is from 
the Nationalist ranks that the best and most determined men that aided 
Mr. Parnell came; it is they who have subscribed and collected the many 
thousand dollars sent home to sustain the movement. 

An Irish writer at this time stated that in the event of war Ireland 
would remain at peace, at least for a while, under the present outlook. 
War would come and pass away and peace be made without in any way 
affecting Ireland but by a mere temporary respite. No European nation 
would interfere in a domestic dispute, for so appears the Irish question to- 
day before the world ; no nation, not even by its unaccredited representa- 
tives, would make any terms with a loyal British subject such as Mr. 
Parnell represents himself to be at the head of a peaceful movement to 
settle domestic troubles by legislation. Neither would it make terms with 
a so-called revolutionary movement that only agitates physical force, but 
will not carry it out. What confidence can any power have in a people 
who want a foreign nation to free them without they themselves striking a 
blow? By doing work themselves aid may come, and then this much spoken 
of opinion of the world might take practical shape and give Ireland 
material help. An enemy of England about to make war on her might 
help the Irish for interested motives, knowing by their acts that there was 
stamina and determination in the race. 

When this "new departure" was published in the Irish Provincial press 
of Dublin it gave great annoyance to the genuine agitator. The men 
who loved agitation and hated and detested every thought of physical force 
were alarmed. 

To reduce all the Irish people to this level of Provincialism has been 
the tendency of the "new departure," no doubt undreamt of by its pro- 
moters. There is no greater proof of what a fearful and poisonous 
degradation generations of foreign rule can have on a high-spirited race 



THE NEW DEPARTURE. 



than to know that an educated Irishman can be found to preach the policy 
of self-abasement contained in the following letter: 

"the new 'departure.' 

Dublin, November 20, 1878. 
«' To the Editor of the New York Herald: 

"Here in Ireland we have of late heard by telegram somewhat of a 
new Irish departure brewing on your side of the Alantic. 

"A belief in isolated insurrectionary movements seems to have died out 
and to be replaced by a determination to obtain such a public standing in 
Ireland as will attract the attention of the world and secure alliances with 
England's (/. <?., the United Kingdom's) enemies. 

"I have not endured imprisonment or been subjected to indignities 
which are meted to political offenders who have inflicted indelible stains 
upon the dignity and honor of the United Kingdom. 

"But Hove Ireland as deeply and truly as any of them; thoughts regard- 
ing her and what is for her happiness and interest follow me in my busi- 
ness, my studies, and my pleasures, are around me whether I live at home 
or abroad. 

"I am a Dublin tradesman, as were my ancestors; my interests are 
therefore identified with the happiness and prosperity of Ireland. I have 
had Irish Nationalist sympathies all my life. I was treasurer of the 
Home Rule League for nearly seven years. I am not therefore unquali- 
fied to speak on Irish politics. 

" But I cannot shut my eyes to present facts or see how the new 
departure — the 'want' to see something that will hurt England {i.e., 
the United Kingdom of which Ireland is part, therefore that will hurt 
Ireland) — would in any way atone for the past or contribute to Ireland's 
greatness in the future. . . 

" Looking over this country you see her not indeed as she might be, 
but in a happier state than ever she was before, having made wonderful 
progress in wealth and civilization during the past thirty years. 

" The civil service of the United Kingdom is open to all through 
competitive examinations, and largely do all classes of Irishmen crowd 
into it. The army, navy, and militia must be popular, as Irishmen form 
a larger proportion thereof in comparison to their number than do the 
inhabitants of any other portion the United Kingdom. A large armed 
police force is here maintained composed of Irishmen ; situations therein 
are eagerly sought for. 

" As to foreign affairs — the influence the United Kingdom has un- 
doubtedly obtained in India and elsewhere — Ireland as a part of that 
United Kingdom would have infinitely greater influence for good than if she 
were independent. 

" Is it not time to leave us in peace, to rest satisfied that whatever is 
for the best will be worked out by the painless and unresisting force of 
circumstances ? 

" Yours respectfully, 

" Alfred Webb." 

These are the genuine Provincial sentiments of the real agitator. 
Mr. Webb is to-day a follower of Mr. Parnell's Provincial movement, and 



290 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

it is with such men and such Provincial and degrading views Irish 
Nationalists sink to when they make alliances with moral suasionists. 

It is difficult to think that Mr. Webb could have read the terms of 
the resolutions tendered to Mr. Parnell for his acceptance. No sensible 
man — as it is presumed Mr. Webb is one — could write such a denunci- 
atory letter attacking the new departure, and really study the platform it 
put forth. It appears as conservative in its demands as could be possi- 
ble in anything approaching even a Provincial document. Mr. Webb was 
a member of a Provincial party, whose platform had been Home Rule for 
Ireland. This was the demand made by the Federalist party as announced 
at the Rotunda Home Rule Conference in 1873. Mr. Webb, as he states in 
his letter, was for seven years treasurer of that organization, and there is not 
a single line in the resolutions of the new departure inimical to Mr. Butt's 
Provincial or local demand. It simply touches on the method of bring- 
ing about the same end by indorsing parliamentary obstruction, which 
was supposed at that time feasible and not inconsistent with moral 
suasion by those who originated it, namely, Mr. Biggar and Mr. Parnell. 
As to the Federal tie binding the island to Britain, there was no material 
change in either its acceptance or rejection from the new programme, for 
both measures of Home Rule meant a continuance of British control in 
some shape or other. It is true that those who framed these resolutions 
had more extended national views, but then they were compelled to recog- 
nize Mr. Parnell's opinions, and also they were necessitated to limit their 
desires inside the scope of their enemy's constitution, outside of which 
moral suasion could not be worked. The Home Rulers or Federalists 
had no land question in their platform, and they were right. For if a 
native legislation is a necessity as both these agitations properly claim, 
then it must be a native legislature that can make suitable land laws for 
Ireland. In the face of all these facts it does appear rather curious that 
Mr. Webb should make so severe an attack upon the New Departure. 
It would appear that the interview of Mr. O'Donovan Rossa was in his 
mind and not the Parliamentary resolutions presented to Mr. Parnell. It 
is not the first time that Mr. Rossa's views have frightened the sober 
citizens of East and West Britain, and that the name of this quiet, peace- 
ful gentleman, who has always had the courage of his convictions and 
never preached false or cowardly doctrines, had become a Fee-Fau-Fum 
to conjure up horrors with. 

But take Mr. Webb on the position he appears to assume as a subject 
of the United Kingdom and a believer in the advantages of the British 
connection, and the inseparable existence of Ireland as one portion of 
that kingdom. Has he carried out his duties as a West Briton ? No, 
decidedly not ; and a Briton should be inclined to look upon Mr. Webb 
as a dangerous and disloyal man : A respectable citizen, who lent his 
name and influence to foment agitation and disorder in the kingdom by 
joining and becoming the treasurer of a political movement, whose objects 
and whose published demands were to materially limit the power of the 
national Parliament sitting in the national capital, London, by removing 
a large portion of the kingdom from its law-making authority and thereby 
impairing that unity and strength which constitutes the national greatness 
of any people. 

As a portion of the British kingdom that western island has no more 
right to a separate legislation than could have Devonshire, Cornwall, or 
Northumberland, and even if a number of the inhabitants of that western 
part of Britain were in favor of such a course, it was the duty of respect- 
able and law-abiding citizens like Mr. Webb to denounce these monstrous 
doctrines. How can a free Parliamentary Government be carried on, if 
the wishes of the majority of the people are not respected, and a great 



THE NEW DEPARTURE. 291 

majority of Mr. Webb's fellow-countrymen (i. e., Britons) look upon people 
like him as firebrands, who are upsetting the minds of a section of the 
British people ; that because they live in the western part of the kingdom, 
claim rights different from their countrymen living in the north, south, 
or east. No nation could permit such dismemberment, for if portions of 
a kingdom were permitted to start separate governments for themselves, 
where would it end ? Why, every county might as well claim a distinct 
parliament and local ministry, and the homogenity of the nation would be 
lost. So Mr. Webb, by his own showing, is a very dangerous person, 
living in a kingdom blessed with all the advantages he points out. A 
country, as he states, that has " made wonderful progress in wealth and 
civilization during the past thirty years" and with the civil service open to 
every portion of the kingdom, yet Mr. Webb tries to lessen the authority 
of the Parliament of this kingdom. The inhabitants of the western por- 
tion — Mr. Webb tells us — have the same equal advantages with their 
fellow-countrymen in the north, east, and south, with also the advantages 
of a large armed force of police composed of western Britons ; notwith- 
standing these advantages Mr. Webb joins a movement to deprive the 
legislature that conferred these blessings of a portion of its authority. 
When the fact is mentioned that the plunder of conquered India is of 
right a portion of their heritage, Mr. Webb points out to his Provincial 
friends the greatness of their common nation, the British kingdom, of 
which Ireland, like Cornwall, is part, and to which kingdom Mr. Webb is 
only in part loyal when he says that he has had " Irish national sympathies 
all his life," and that these feelings have pursued him in his studies and 
his pleasures at home and abroad. A Cornishman would never for a 
moment speak of his local feelings and love of Cornwall as national. He 
would never degrade the dignity of his native Britain by setting up along- 
side or before his country the locality of his birth. While he is no doubt 
proud of being a Cornishman, he is prouder still of being a Briton, and 
makes but a trifling distinction between different parts of the same king- 
dom. He looks upon his flag with national respect and admiration, hop- 
ing to live in peace beneath its folds, and, if necessary, to protect its 
interests and its honor with his life and sleep when death comes in some 
quiet grave, leaving its guardianship to his children. None of these 
aspirations could have filled the would-be loyal heart of Mr. Webb, when 
he remained treasurer for seven years of a movement whose expressed 
object was to in a measure dismember the national Parliament of the 
United Kingdom. 

This is a natural course of reasoning for a true and honest Briton, 
such as Mr. Webb claims to be by inference, but which he is not. 
Men who think they can be Irish Nationalists and English Nationalists 
at one and the same time, attempt as great an impossibility as the man 
who would try to straddle two horses in the same race. 

It is because the statements of this would-be West Briton are false, 
that the Irish people are engaged in a hostile struggle with that foreign 
nation, Britain, who seeks by force to fasten her rule upon them, which 
is pushing the Irish people at home, slowly but surely, to the brink of 
destruction. 

They are not of the same race, blood, or language as the Briton ; he 
has forced them to speak his tongue by the same methods which he has 
imposed his person and his rule upon them — by fraud, treachery, and 
force ; by every species of cruelty that his deliberately wicked heart 
found necessary to accomplish his purpose. They are no more Britons 
or part of his United Kingdom than they are Turks and part of the 
Ottoman Empire. True, they are kept as prisoners bound beneath 
p ritain's rule, but that is not their willing destiny. The Briton holds 



292 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Ireland by force, and if she can sever those bonds by force she will, 
and with God's help means to. This false cry of the Irish being of 
the same race, blood, and language as the Briton, is always used by the 
enemy as a sort of apology for his determination to rule them. They 
have no feelings in common with the Briton or his flag. They rejoice at 
his defeat and they mourn at his victories. They pray unceasingly that 
he will be involved in war with some strong European power, so that they 
can learn of his disasters, his ruin, and his destruction ; they wish to see 
his flag trailed in the dust under defeat, humiliation, and disgrace. 
These are not the feelings of the inhabitants of the same nation or the 
feelings of people of the same race. The Russian Nihilist, who is at 
war with the existing government of his country, if she were involved in 
a national war would deplore her defeat ; he would remember, before 
everything, that the flag which was beaten was that of his country. But 
the Irishman has no such feeling toward Britain's flag ; he has his own 
national emblem and under its folds he hopes, in the near future, to live 
and die. The Frenchman will become a German, and the Spaniard will 
become a Russian when the Irishman becomes a Briton-. The inhabi- 
tants of Ireland, the ancient race that have dwelt there for over two 
thousand years, can never be made to lose their nationality. When the 
neighboring island, Britain, was peopled by savages, they were enjoying 
the blessings of civilization, ere Britain's Anglo-Saxon fathers under 
Hengist and Horsa visited that island. The Irish have kept up their 
struggle for national existence for seven centuries ; they have never struck 
their flag, and so help them God they never will. The British politician 
often speaks of the mixture of races in Ireland ; what mixture exists 
there is no more than in any other European nation. Englishmen have 
gone to France and settled there, marrying Frenchwomen, but their 
offspring in a few generations have nothing English about them but 
their names. This is so in Ireland ; the invaders found a vigorous, 
healthy race on the island, and intermarried in most cases with the 
inhabitants. There are probably some few families of more or less 
Anglo-Saxon descent, but then they do not make up any appreciable 
number in the mass of the people. A thousand hogsheads of English 
ale emptied into the river Shannon will not turn that noble river into 
British beer. The unceasing flow of the greater swallows up the lesser, 
and so with those who have settled in Ireland in the past — they were 
swallowed up in the Irish race, leaving no trace of their British origin 
but their names. 

The Irish are a distinct people, having distinct habits, manners, and 
customs, and are no more fellow-countrymen with the Briton than are the 
French or the Russian his fellow-countrymen. Their national ambition 
and their aim as a people is to establish a free and independent republic, 
flying their own national flag. This feeling predominates the great 
masses of the people in Ireland and elsewhere. It is presented to them 
that by Parliamentary agitation they can get part of their demands. 
They seek this but for one object, namely, to strengthen their hands to 
sever all political connections with that foreign nation whose rule and 
flag they abhor. And if Ireland was free to-morrow to give a plebiscite 
as to independence or Home Rule, there is no doubt of the fact that the 
vote for absolute independence would be in the immense majority. At 
present they are led to believe that Mr. Gladstone really means what he 
publicly states : that he will give to them genuine self-government, which 
they mean by the words Home Rule, and as his meaning is different, 
there will be a rude awakening from their present dream of hope. It 
was then in the spirit of self-abrogation as to their real opinions, that the 
Nationalists took up the platform of the Provincialists, thinking they 



• THE NEW DEPARTURE. 293 

would give that programme another great and united opportunity — and 
the result is so far, and must continue, failure. 

To attempt to refute the monstrous false statement made by Mr. Webb 
as to the increase of prosperity and wealth in Ireland during the last 
thirty years would be simply to use a hundred-ton hammer to crush a fly 
with. It is not imputed to Mr. Webb any willful intention to state any- 
thing false, but it is well known to Irishmen from past experience the 
society such men mingle with — the quiet, socially respectable city trades- 
men, who manage to live along earning a little more from their sale of 
British manufactures than their wants require and so save money, and at 
the same time are toiling to enrich the foreign manufacturer whose com- 
mercial representative calls around on a flying visit to Ireland to collect 
his money and book fresh orders, and so continue to ship to Ireland the 
products of his looms and factories. Mr. Webb knows little of the wants 
of the struggling artisans and mechanics who are around him, and the num- 
ber of his countrymen who are idle for lack of any employment at home, 
and who if they were engaged in making the wares which such as Mr. 
Webb vend in their stores would help to bring about that prosperity 
which Mr. Webb speaks of. 

During the thirty years preceding the date of Mr. Webb's letter, 1S78, 
Ireland had suffered the most revolting of artificial famines : a single 
esculent, the potato crop, failed, and in the midst of corn and cattle the 
people died of hunger like rotten sheep. The population decreased over 
three million souls during that period, and every possible national decay 
that can destroy a nation has pursued Ireland ever since. Every year, 
every month, every week, the country is growing poorer in material wealth 
and declining in population in spite of the large natural increase of the 
race. Ireland is languishing in her death throes under foreign rule ; 
her union with the alien is that of the vampire and his victim. The British 
vampire is drawing away her life blood. 

The new departure was at this time the subject of discussion in Irish 
circles. James Stephens, who came to America early in 1879 on private 
business and to try and recover his lost supremacy, was interviewed as to 
the. new departure. He said : 

11 The new departure has failed. It never could succeed. The Home 
Rule movement sprung up after the defeat of the Fenian physical force 
movement. Nationalists joined it because temporarily dispirited by the 
failure ; they hoped such a movement could accomplish something. In 
this they have been woefully disappointed and the fall of the Home Rule 
movement rang the death knell of constitutional agitation among Irish 
Nationalists." 

The fall of the Home Rule movement spoken of by Mr. Stephens was 
the end of the Butt movement, as the new party was called both Obstruc- 
tionists and Land Leaguers. 

The new departure gave occasion for a good deal of newspaper dis- 
cussion. A prominent Irish Nationalist published a very lengthy letter 
in reply to several attacks made upon the policy of making this change. 
Here are one or two extracts : 

" The object aimed at by the advanced National party — the recovery 
of Ireland's national independence and the severance of all political con- 
nection with England — is one that would require the utmost efforts and 
the greatest sacrifices on the part of the Irish people. Unless the whole 
Irish people or a great majority of them undertake the task and bend 
their whole energies to its accomplishment — unless the best intellect, the 
financial resources, and the physical strength of the nation be enlisted in 
this effort — it can never be realized. Even with all these in our favor the 
difficulties in our way would be enormous, but if firmly united and ably 



294 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

led we could overcome them, and the result achieved would be worth the 
sacrifice. I am not one of those who despair of Ireland's freedom, and 
am as much in favor of continuing the struggle to-day as some of those 
who talk loudest against constitutionalism. I am convinced that the 
whole Irish people can be enlisted in an effort to free their native land, 
and that they have within themselves the power to overcome all obstacles 
in their way. 

" But I am also convinced that one section of the people alone can 
never win independence, and no political party, no matter how devoted 
and determined, can ever win the support of the whole people if they 
never come before the public and take no part in the everyday life of 
the country. I have often said it before, and I repeat it now again, that a 
mere conspiracy will never free Ireland. 

" I am not arguing against conspiracy, but only pointing out the 
necessity of Irish Nationalists taking whatever public action for the 
advancement of the national cause they may find within their reach — such 
action as will place the aims and objects of the national party in a more 
favorable light before the whole Irish people." 

There are in these statements of the writer many undoubted, honest 
and wise opinions. He is of course correct when he states that it will 
require the energies of the whole Irish people united to accomplish the 
redemption of the country from alien rule, but this public movement 
must be a national one, enlisting the best brains and sterling manhood of 
the nation. Men who, like John Mitchell, will hurl in the invader's face 
their right to govern themselves and who will despise his chains, dungeon, 
or scaffold. There are thousands of such men in Ireland as well as in 
exile, but modern policy has been to condemn all such manly teaching, as 
if the wishy-washy politics they preach deceive the invader ; it is their own 
countrymen they deceive and corrupt. This Parliamentary movement 
has been educating the masses in the false teachings of Provincialism 
and its productions have been gentlemen who, like Mr. Webb, are spread- 
ing broadcast the most pernicious doctrines. They have been teaching 
the people that the holding of a public meeting to pass Provincial reso- 
lutions is an act tending toward the procuring of self-government and 
free land. As if these meetings could influence a foreign enemy, whose 
interests and theirs are decidedly antagonistic! The whole energy of these 
movements has been and is being directed to educate the masses in the 
belief that with a change of faction or party government in the enemy's 
country better rule will come to Ireland, which is only a choice between 
strychnine or Prussic acid ; both British parties are deadly poisons that 
are sweeping the race away from their island home. The Irish people's 
energies are now (1887) directed toward removing the Tory Government 
to restore to power the government of Ireland's more deadly enemy, 
William Ewart Gladstone. 

As long as Ireland is represented in the British Commons, this state of 
things must continue. Irish Nationality will be used by English parties ; 
members should be elected to stay at home. 

A mere conspiracy will not free Ireland, this Irish Nationalist writes. 
Possibly not. It depends on the programme and the capability of the 
leaders. " A mere conspiracy " freed Italy from the Austrians. To 
Mazzini and his brave companions of Young Italy are due the eventful 
success of Italian independence. Mazzini has been called the "Apostle 
of the Dagger." Wendell Phillips, in one of his speeches delivered 
shortly before his death, speaking of the freedom of Ireland, said : "If 
the dagger must come, if it is a necessity, then in God's name let it 
come." This " mere conspiracy " drew the attention of the world to 



THE NEW DEPARTURE. 295 

Austrian rule in Italy when Count Pellegrino Rossi fell beneath the 
stilletto of an outraged people. Many will say this was truly horrible, 
but not by one-thousandth part as brutal as was Austrian rule in Italy. 
This " mere conspiracy " sent emissaries to Napoleon III., demanding 
his aid to drive out the Austrians from their native land, Napoleon 
having been in early life a member of the organization, and his elder 
brother having lost his life in their ranks during one of their isolated 
insurrectionary attempts ; he refused : and what followed was the 
attempt to kill him in Paris, and which resulted in the death of a number 
of innocent people. Orsini and his companions were arrested and 
beheaded, but their principles could not be guillotined. This "mere 
conspiracy " nearly involved France and England in war. It compelled 
Napoleon III. to take steps to carry out the dead men's demands. At 
his New Year's reception, 1859, when addressing the Austrian ambas- 
sador in terms of hauteur, he significantly touched his sword. This 
simple action of Napoleon III. alarmed Europe, as the French Emperor 
was then the leading figure among European potentates. The gallantry 
of the French nation and the memory of his great uncle had given to 
him borrowed luster. 

War with Austria soon followed, and Italy, eschewing the dagger when 
its services were no longer needed, like Ireland, was only too ready to 
take the field when a fair chance of resistance offered. All readers Oi 
modern history know the sequel and what great results tending toward 
Italian independence followed. 

Great results often spring from trifling actions. It was the kicking 
over of an oil lamp by a cow which burned the great city of Chicago. 
" Mere conspiracy," if intelligently guided, is by no means to be despised. 

The Italians did not allow their revolutionary movement to lapse into 
one of opportunism or by secretly arming think they were doing all 
their duty. Had they waited for the time, when Napoleon would choose 
to aid them to recover their liberty from the Austrians, the then hated 
Tedeschi might be to-day in Lombardy and Venice ; or had they com- 
menced a career of public agitation they would have been suppressed by 
whatever government they tried to overthrow by the tongue. No people 
on God's footstool ever attempted such an absurd folly but the Irish. 
And they are too often led by men who have not the courage to risk or 
advocate more serious doctrines. 

The Apostle of the Dagger, Joseph Mazzini, is immortalized in stone 
in the grand Central Park in this great city of New York. The Italian 
people, unlike the Irish, never denounced Mazzini or his compatriots for 
their actions, which they considered necessity forced upon him. Nations, 
in their struggles for freedom, have to resort to every desperate and 
necessarily cruel means. The British, who employed the savage red 
man to scalp the women and children in the Revolutionary War, would 
no doubt plead the exigencies of the struggle. West British Irishmen, 
even of the most pious kind, even clergymen, would not refuse to dine 
with Captain McGregor, who blew up with dynamite the thousands of 
men, women, and children of the Basuto. They would doubtless say it 
was war. When Wolseley broke his camp at midnight before Tel-el- 
Kebir, and without beat of drum or sound of music stole assassin-like 
upon the sleeping Egyptians to kill and murder them, it was war, as 
honorable as mankind will carry it out. As General Sherman said to the 
Confederate General, Hardy, before Atlanta, when the Southern soldier 
reproached him for burning, devastating, and laying waste the country in 
his march, and said it was not honorable warfare, the illustrious American 
general replied : " No ; war is, not honorable, it is brutal and destructive, 
and the more brutal and destructive it is carried out, the sooner it will 



296 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

e?iforce peace." When the British fleet opened fire on the comparatively 
unarmed town of Alexandria two hours before the expiration of the 
notice, the British admiral, Seymour, pleaded the necessities of war, as he 
feared the Egyptians might have in that short time got some heavy guns 
trained upon his ships. Women and children were killed flying from the 
beleaguered city. Seymour possibly did not intentionally mean to kill 
them, but it is supposed, a la John Bull, he was in no sentimental mood. 
For Englishmen to kill their foes is all right, but to kill any of them in 
return is murder. When the British recently looted Burmah, stealing all 
the king's jewels and his lands, they styled the Dacoits who attacked and 
killed some of the invading burglars as rebels and murderers. They 
consider they are justified in hanging the Irish people by the aid of per- 
jured witnesses and suborned juries, a mock form which they term 
a trial. So be it. Irish patriots accept the issue, the world will accept the 
result of the struggle. It is read in the second chapter of Exodus that 
Moses slew the Egyptian who struck one of his countrymen, and looking 
around and seeing that he was unobserved, he buried the dead body in 
the sand. If this was murder, it is to be found in Holy Writ. The leader 
of the chosen people was certainly not an assassin. Italy is free, and her 
people never denounced Mazzini, and he certainly never denounced his col- 
leagues or called them assassins. Mazzini's statue was not placed in 
Central Park because of any particular weapon he was necessitated in 
using to bring about his country's freedom. O Cant of the age ! We 
bow before you and hold up our hands in pious horror to denounce these 
wicked men ! 

The letter in advocacy of the " new departure " continues : 

" When the Irish Republican Brotherhood was started the prevailing 
feeling among the people was distrust of parliamentary agitation of all 
kinds. The collapse of the Tenant Right movement and the treachery 
of Keogh, Sadlier, and their infamous confreres had given a shock to the 
people from which it took them years to recover. They were in a state 
of political torpor. I may be told that Fenianism took them out of this 
lethargy and infused a soul into Ireland. It did nothing of the sort. It 
found the national feeling reviving ; it was, in fact, one of the effects of 
that revival, and it turned the re-awakening spirit into a certain channel. 
Whether this was fortunate or not I will not discuss just now, but I have 
too keen a recollection of the period ; know a little too much about the 
spirit of the young men of that time to be led away by the claptrap 
which passes current among a certain number of enthusiastic young men 
for historical fact, having the simple object of bolstering up the reputa- 
tion of one of those heaven-sent leaders with whom we are sometimes 
blessed. Among the Nationalists of that day the doctrines of John 
Mitchell prevailed. 

" They had drunk deeply during the years of inaction of the literature 
of Young Ireland, and the boldest and most outspoken of that school was 
a decided success. 

" He continued to address them after his escape from prison through 
certain national papers in Ireland long after the other '48 leaders had 
laid down their pens and ceased to work. The young men were ripe for 
the hand of the organizer, and their future course depended on the 
impulse then given. Besides there were many reasons why at that period 
parliamentary agitation should be discussed, but I may be permitted to 
express my conviction that the discouragement was carried very much too 
far, and great mischief done in consequence. 

"The fact, however, is undeniable that the policy of complete absten- 
tion was a ' Fenian ' policy only, and that it was never previous to the 
starting of Fenianism the settled policy of the National party, though 



THE NEW DEPARTURE. 297 

naturally the attraction of men seeking separation was principally to 
physical force." 

The men of '48 left a literature that was truly national, and which 
helped to guide the young Irishman in the true national path. 

These two great and immortal Irishmen, Thomas Davis and John 
Mitchell, stand forth as guiding lights in the one true path to freedom. 
Mitchell in scathing and scorching language denounced parliamentary 
agitation. There are no Mitchells in literature at the present time to 
denounce these Provincial doctrines, which are doing their best to emascu- 
late Ireland's patriotic young men. Irish orators, many of them Nation- 
alists, address their people from public platforms and denounce what 
they cherish in their souls ; they attempt to make their friends believe that 
the masses can divine their meaning, and that when they say black the 
people understand they mean white. They call this diplomacy. All this 
time they are educating the people to believe in the chimera of parlia- 
mentary agitation. 

Stephens, as an organizer and preacher, was honest to Ireland ; he 
always cautioned the people against that deadly poison, parliamentary 
agitation. Opportunist and impotent as he unfortunately proved, he 
preached no false doctrine. The National advocate of parliamentary 
agitation, in his letter to the Freeman, denies that Fenianism was the 
cause of lifting Ireland out of her torpid condition. True, it was not the 
sole cause. Irishmen are naturally patriotic. They imbibe hatred of the 
English invaders with their mother's milk. Traditions and stories of '98 
are spoken of at the fireside, and then the teachings of Doheny, Davis, 
and Mitchell were inculcating intelligent and patriotic doctrines into the 
young men. When the organizer came among them, he shaped these 
national aspirations into national work. He showed them a course by 
which they might accomplish the fulfillment of Davis and Mitchell's doc- 
trine. They eagerly grasped it, and every fresh recruit brought into the 
National ranks was an additional preacher to spread the light of true 
patriotism and to show up the old folly of arguing England out of the 
country. John Mitchell believed in denouncing the folly of parlia- 
mentary agitation to his dying day, to be elected for an Irish constituency, 
and not to sit in the London Commons, but by the elected member's 
refusal, protest against the insult that Ireland should send deputies to 
a foreign and hostile assembly. This is not a belief in parliamentary 
practices. What have Irishmen of this generation to leave their young 
men when they pass away, should they not succeed in their life's labors ? 
There has come no John Mitchell or Thomas Davis to fill their people's 
souls with the magic fire of patriotism. The memories of the present 
movement leave no such ennobling sentiments behind ; its battlefields are 
public meetings, its arsenals are stocked full of protests and resolutions, 
its victories are either the defeat of an English party or the holding of a 
midnight meeting to spite the English enemy, and its oriflamme the pub- 
lic burning of a proclamation issued by the foe. Nay, more, it claims as 
victories the arrest of prominent agitators, and it teaches that every man 
imprisoned is more dangerous in his cell than when free. To carry this 
doctrine out to its logical conclusion, if England arrests every Irishman 
possible, and packs her jails with them, it will be a crowning victory to 
the cause. 

The agitators' organ, United Ireland, tells us that if its proprietor is 
injured by the three months sentence lately passed on him (1887), the 
Tories may expect " compou?id vengeance" and as they denounce physical 
force, and all its works and pomps, it must be supposed that this species 
of "compound vengeance " must mean increased vituperation and abuse. 
All this time the organ of these Provincialists never alludes to the fact 



298 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

that numbers of patriotic Irish Nationalists are in British dungeons under 
life sentences. The only " compound vengence " it has in their case is 
abuse of their friends, and every attempt to stain their honor that can be 
practiced. These are some of the fruits of these impulsive Nationalists' 
New Departure. 

This gentleman's sentiments, before his eyes were hoodwinked by the 
new departure, were different. In a previous letter to the Dublin Irish- 
man, he says : 

" There should be no further toleration of men with two sets of con- 
tradictory principles that are each paraded as honest convictions, accord- 
ing as the occasion may demand — men who are loyal Federalists to-day 
and rampantly disloyal Nationalists to-morrow [/'. e., it is supposed the 
writer means loyal Nationalists. The words disloyal and rebel are used 
by Irish patriots in the same sense as their enemy uses them, which is 
a slander on the Irish cause]. A man cannot be a Whig and a Tory 
at one and the same time, nor can he be a repealer or a Nationalist 
and honestly sign the Federal pledge. He is either telling the truth 
when he signs, that pledge, or stating a deliberate falsehood ; atid any 
man who claims that he can publicly express his belief that a Federal 
union with England would satisfactorily settle the National question, 
and at the same time he is working for Irish Independence, should 
be spurned by Home Rulers and Nationalists alike. There can be 
nothing gained by Irishmen deceiving and cheating one another, and 
the Nationalist who simulates a belief in Federalism \i. e., Home Fule\ 
because certain men tell him it is ' a policy ' to do so, is pursuing a very 
disastrous policy indeed, and one that must inevitably end in disgrace 
and humiliation. He is helping to spread the delusion that the Irish 
people have accepted Federalism [/. e., Home Rule], and do not want 
independence. He is proclaiming this to the millions of the Irish race in 
America and to those foreign powers whose interests conflict with those 
of England, and he need not wonder if his duplicity and double dealing 
produce a feeling of contempt in quarters where good will is not an un- 
meaning word. 

" If there is one thing more than another about which Irish National- 
ists should be of one mind and act without hesitation or delay, it is the 
attitude they should assume toward parties claiming to work for the 
amelioration of Ireland and to speak in the name of the Irish people. 
. . . To have any chance of success at all, the party must be a homo- 
geneous one, led by the best intellects available for leadership, and acting 
in all matters affecting the welfare of the nation. Above all, the leaders 
must be earnest. There must be no question about their principles or 
opinions. They cannot be Federalists [/'. e., Home Rulers] to-day and 
advocates of independence to-morrow. 

" It is an undeniable fact that the foolish and ridiculous policy of 
obstruction was decided on not by a meeting of the Home Rule members 
of Parliament, but by a meeting of professed Nationalists in England. 
These men who scoff at the played-out policy of saying what you mean and 
standing honestly by your principles, are to be the new saviors of the 
country and to regenerate it with thirty clubs of the Home Rule Con- 
federation of Great Britain, having an average of twenty or thirty 
members each, not two per cent, of whom are honest Federalists [/. e., 
Home Rulers]. This is new statecraft that is to 'unite' the Irish people 
and lead them with their eyes blindfolded to freedom. Why the very 
existence of this Home Rule Confederation is a fraud and a hypocrisy, 



THE NEW DEPARTURE. 299 

though there are many well-meaning dupes of worthless tricksters in its 
ranks. 

" Something must be done and done quickly to raise the National 
party to the level of the work before it, to show that the word ' policy' has 
a higher and deeper meaning than the adoption of petty devices to con- 
ceal one's real intention. . . 

" If the National party be composed of men who are only capable of 
such miserable subterfuge, they are fit for nothing and deserving of the 
contempt and reprobation of all earnest men." 

This letter, published in the Irishman, contradicts most emphatically 
the views of the same writer in the Dublin Freeman, after and in defense 
of the New Departure. Some of the sentences speak truly of the condi- 
tion to which the New Departure reduced the revolutionary leaders. The 
gentleman's own words are as scathing a rebuke as can be given to this 
disastrous policy. The New Departure was an accomplished fact when 
Mr. Parnell came to America in 1880. On his way across the Atlantic he 
was interviewed as to his opinion of the Irish National movement and 
its policy toward the Provincialists. 

Mr. Parnell said : 

" As far as I have been able to gather, the Fenian organization and its 
leaders are opposed, though not hostile, to our movement, the reason being 
that it is constitutional. A true revolutionary movement in Ireland should, 
in my opinion, partake of both a constitutional and an illegal character. It 
should be an open and a secret organization using the constitution for 
its own purposes, but also taking advantage of its secret combination. 
But the leaders of the Fenian movement do not believe in constitutional 
action because it has always been used in the past for the selfish purposes 
of the leaders. There was a strong objection by the Fenians to our parlia- 
mentary action for the same reasons, and, indeed, if we look at the acts 
of the Irish parliamentary leaders since the union there is ample justifica- 
tion for the views of the physical force party." 

How history repeats itself ! Mr. Parnell was then an unconscious 
prophet of what the future would bring forth even in his own case, that 
there is indeed ample justification to condemn Irish parliamentary leaders 
and their policy. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

(1880.) 

PARNELL'S AMERICAN TOUR. 

Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon's Tour — Mr. Michael Kennedy of Troy, N. Y. — " Five Dollars 
for Bread and Fifteen Dollars for Lead " — Progress of the Crusade — Dublin Mansion 
House Fund — Cable Message to Mayor of New York — Spread of the Famine — 
Election of Home Rulers — Mr. Biggar's Motion Refused by Lord Mayor Gray — 
— Carried by a Majority — Mr. Mitchell Henry's Otherwise — Lord Mayor's Banquet 
— Duke of Marlborough's Letter — Flunkeyism in Dublin — Lord Lieutenant's Levee — 
Parnell and the Mansion House Fund — Parnell in Albany, N. Y. — His Reception by 
the Legislature — Address to the People of America — Attacked by the Irish Press — 
Parnell's Reply to Churchill — The Queen's Bounty in '47 — New York Herald Famine 
Fund — Dublin Freeman and Mr. Parnell — Irish Bishops Defend the Mansion House 
Committee — Reception in Congress — Parnell's Speech to House of Representatives in 
Session — American Public Opinion Ireland's Irresistible Weapon — Washington and 
Lafayette — Session of Parliament Stopped — Appeal to the Country — Lord Beacons- 
field's Letter to the Duke of Marlborough — Mr. Shaw the Home Rule Leader's Reply 
— Manifesto of the Irish Confederation of Great Britain — British Empire not Homo- 
geneous — Crown Colonies — Semi-Independent Colonies — No Imperial Parliament — 
Disrupted British Empire — Diverse Interests Between Britain and Self-Governing 
Colonies — Mr. Parnell Summoned Home — Farewell Address — Forming Branch of 
League in New York — Mr. Parnell Escorted to the Steamer by the 69th Regiment — 
The Farewell on the S. S. Baltic. 

Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon left New York on a tour of the United 
States. They visited every important city and town possible during their 
stay. Mr. Parnell repeated his great speech as delivered in Madison 
Square Garden ; he impressed upon crowded audiences all over the 
United States the fact that he would shame England into the solution of 
the Irish troubles. That his powerful weapon, American public opinion, 
would complete his success, and that the landlords should go. He 
repeated everywhere he went the important statement that that was the 
the last time he would require to go round on a begging tour for Ireland, 
as he was certain that the cause which created these periodical appeals 
would be removed by his policy, and Ireland would then cease to be a 
mendicant among the nations. 

Mr. Parnell's sincerity, truth, and patriotism were stamped upon every 
word he uttered, and the means he intended using were so impressed by 
him upon his hearers that he carried conviction to thousands of sympa- 
thizers ; none but the most prejudiced could for a moment doubt that 
he himself believed in the success of the new crusade. 

At Troy, N. Y., when Mr. Parnell had completed his address, a gentle- 
man in the audience walked up to the platform and handed the Irish 
leader twenty dollars, at the same time saying, " Mr. Parnell, here are 
five dollars for bread and fifteen dollars for lead." Mr. Parnell took the 
money with a smile. He no doubt thought there would be no need for 
lead, that the new crusade of shame would accomplish his purpose 
thoroughly. 

The old Irish patriot who presented this subscription was Mr. Michael 
Kennedy of Troy, N. Y., a man who had been engaged for many years in 
Irish national politics and who was thoroughly convinced of Mr. Parnell's 
truth and earnestness, as he was also fully aware of the impossibility of 

300 



MR. PARNELL'S AMERICAN TOUR. 301 

Mr. Parnell's course. He believed that the energetic young Irishman on 
finding he could not succeed by words, would eventually resort to some- 
kind of force as expressed by Mr. Kennedy, when he gave his money for 
" lead." 

The great spread of poverty was so rapid that another famine fund 
was started in the Mansion House, Dublin, by the new Lord Mayor, 
Edmund Dvvyer Gray, and he was assisted in his endeavors by the 
moderate section of the Home Rule Parliamentary party. They sent out 
a strong appeal for relief. So Ireland had three charitable organizations 
making the beggar's request for alms : The Duchess of Marlborough's, 
fund, Lord Mayor Gray's fund, and the fund started by Mr. Parnell. 

Lord Mayor Gray cabled this appeal for help to the Mayor of New 
York : 

" Dublin, January 10, 1880. 
" Hon. Edward Cooper, Mayor of New York : 

"Distress increasing, aid urgently required. 

" Lord Mayor of Dublin, 

"Irish Relief Committee." 

Mayor Cooper replied as follows : 

"I greatly deplore the increase of distress in Ireland and will cause 
your dispatch to be communicated to the relief committee here and to 
the public press. " Edward Cooper, Mayor." 

Another appeal was sent to the Lord Mayor of London, and the unfor- 
tunate pauper nation was compelled to ask for alms to that very country 
that robbed her of her wealth and destroyed her trade and manufactures. 

A public meeting of the Home Rule Members of Parliament was held 
at the Mansion House, Dublin, on January 17, 1880, the Lord Mayor in 
the chair. Mr. William Shaw, the chairman of the Parliamentary party, 
and the official Irish Provincial leader, proposed a resolution, which was 
passed, calling on the Government to institute productive relief works. 
Mr. Shaw said the Government willfully shut its eyes to the distress in 
Ireland. Mr. Mitchell Henry said if their demands were not complied 
with they must force compliance by constitutional action or otherwise. 
The O'Donoghue said that in the future he would act and work with the 
Home Rulers. Mr. Mitchell Henry said that the Irish members should 
not permit the attention of Parliament to be directed to foreign policy 
until the affairs of Ireland had been put in a proper condition. 

The Lord Mayor refused to receive a resolution expressing sympathy 
with the peasantry in the west of Ireland in the struggle to retain their 
holdings, on the ground that the struggle had assumed the aspect of 
physical force. During an exciting debate Mr. Biggar declared Mr. 
Shaw was not a leader of the Irish people and " pronounced " in favor of 
Mr. Parnell. 

It was very apparent for some time previous that there was a struggle 
going on inside the Home Rule Parliamentary party as to the question of 
leadership and policy. What was called the advanced party of Parlia- 
mentarians espoused the more active policy, which policy was not pre- 
sented to them nor by them to the people as simple agitation alone. 
The great charm this policy had for the Irish masses was its active princi- 
ple of obstruction. They were taught that by using the forms of the 
House of Commons they could stop British legislation, and thus make 
Irish members so great an impediment to English law-making, that the 
British would be compelled to surrender Home Rule to preserve their 
legislative assembly from this novel invasion. This policy could not be 
called agitation ; it was in reality physical force, and this species of physi- 
cal force first made Mr. Parnell the chosen champion and hero of the 



302 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Irish people. In the Parliamentary ranks at that time this policy had 
few followers, but in the country it had an overwhelming majority. Mr. 
William Shaw, the Parliamentary leader, felt compelled to take some 
action in the face of the great distress to try and preserve some popularity 
on the near approach of the general election. The Lord Mayor, since so 
ardent a follower of Mr. Parnell's, was exceedingly nervous at anything 
which appeared to bear the slightest approval of that greatest of crimes 
in the eyes of such Irishmen, then as now — physical resistance to tyranny ; 
and yet Mr. Gray took part in the obstruction divisions in the House. 
Mr. Mitchell Henry was a strong opponent of Mr. Parnell and Mr. 
Biggar's, and was then and is still an opponent of Irish independence, 
yet in his speech here uses expressions which can have no meaning but 
physical force. He speaks of forcing the government to take a certain 
course, either by constitutional agitation or otherwise. What is this 
otherwise to which Mr. Henry alludes? The Irish people cannot deduce 
any other meaning from this remark but that this moral suasionist 
meant a resort to violence. Some sort of violence should be used- 
to "force" as Mr. Henry puts it, the British Ministers to do anything they 
were not inclined to do. 

The Lord Mayor listened to Mr. Mitchell Henry's remarks without 
any rebuke, and yet refused to accept Mr. Biggar's resolution, which 
indirectly indorsed the same policy. The meeting overruled the presid- 
ing officer and Mr. Biggar succeeded in receiving an indorsement. 

The Lord Mayor's banquet was about to take pl^ce, and Lord Mayor 
Gray, who dispensed the hospitalities of the Mansion House that year, 
did it in princely style. He was ably supported by his amiable and 
accomplished wife. The Lady Mayoress' receptions and entertainments 
were of the most recherche and elaborate kind. Her gracious manner as 
hostess of the civic mansion and her exquisite toilettes were the admir- 
ation of the elite of the Metropolis. Mrs. Gray was also popular with the 
people, who remembered her mother's and sisters' many acts of benevo- 
lence and charity. The Duke of Marlborough and all the exquisites of 
the viceregal court were expected to honor the Mansion House banquet 
by their presence. For the people who had hitherto flocked to the 
civic dinners were especially loyal to the British Queen's representative, 
and could not possibly hope for a higher ambition than to bask beneath 
the sunshine of his ducal smile. 

But great was the consternation among these amiable flunkies, when 
the Duke of Marlborough, in reply to the Lord Mayor's invitation, sent 
the following answer : 

" My Lord : 

" I observe that in your official capacity as Lord Mayor, you presided 
at a public meeting in the City Hall, at which resolutions were passed in 
relation to the West of Ireland to schemes of enforcement and to the 
measures which Her Majesty's Government have taken for the relief of 
the distress existing in parts of the country. I regret that the character 
of the resolution will prevent me from having the honor of dining at the 
Mansion House on the 3d of next month, as it would not be in my power 
either to ignore them when they have received official sanction nor to 
make observation upon them while accepting your Lordship's hospitality. 
I have the honor to remain, 

" Your obedient servant, 

"Marlborough. 
" Viceregal Lodge, Dublin, January 27, 1880." 

Lord Mayor Gray and his friends were compelled to eat their dinner 
without the presence of Britain's Lord Deputy. Some indignation was 



MR. PARNELL'S AMERICAN TOUR. 3°3 

expressed in pro-British radical sections. These West British Radicals 
wished to turn the feeling occasioned by this letter to the service of 
their party, then, as now, telling the Irish what great things they might 
expect if they got rid of the brutal Tories and had the good Liberal 
party restored to power, as it is dinned into Irish ears at this date 
by the same kindly Liberals, as they cry " Codlin's your friend, not 
Short." 

But Lord Mayor Gray pocketed the insult which Spencer-Churchill 
bestowed on his invitation, and in spite of this strongly worded disapproval 
of civic official sanction, the Lord Mayor in his state coach, attended 
by his livery servants, in powdered hair and wigs and in gorgeous cos- 
tumes, he himself wearing the state robes of office and with the collar 
of S. S., and attended by a goodly number of alderman and town 
councilors and other flunkies in their civic growns, went to His Grace 
of Marlborough's levee, making humble obeisance for being permitted to 
dwell beneath the shadow of viceroyalty and to enjoy the numerous 
blessings and happiness thereunto pertaining, and also to show by their 
presence their grateful thanks for the extraordinary generosity shown Ire- 
land by their beloved queen, who, out of her immense wealth, sent such a 
munificent sum to relieve the starving Irish as five hundred golden 
pounds. Some of these men are public leaders in the crusade of shame 
still so vigorously carried on. 

The Mansion House fund did not please Mr. Parnell. He knew the 
men who composed it, and had great doubts as to their sincerity. At 
the present time (September, 1887) Mr. Parnell has no more faithful 
lieutenant than Mr. Dwyer Gray, then Dublin's Chief Magistrate. Mr. 
Parnell sent the following letter to the New York Herald, which in 
trenchant language explains itself : 

" Rochester, N. Y., January 27, 1880. 
" To the Editor of the Herald : 

"As you have thought proper to suppress the most important portion of 
my remarks at Buffalo in reference to the Dublin Mansion House Relief 
Committee, I am compelled to supply the omission by asking you to 
publish this note. 

" You first attempt to foist upon the people of the United States the 
Relief Committee started by the Duchess of Marlborough, but the com- 
mon sense and self-respect of America revolting from your project, you 
now endeavor to mend your hand by lavishly parading and advertising the 
claims of the Dublin Mansion House Committee, an association of a 
kindred character, mainly composed of government office-holders, Whig 
and Tory landlords, and Castle flunkies, destitute of all sympathy with 
our struggling people and hostile to their aspirations. 

"We shall be told that the presence of the Catholic hierarchy on this 
committee is a guarantee, but the fact still remains that it is mainly com- 
posed of the landlord interest, and much of it of a most virulent character. 

"The control of the committee also and the disposition of its funds 
must necessarily rest with the Dublin portion of it, since its sessions are 
held in that city. Hence the influence of the Irish bishops whose names 
have been attached to mislead Catholic public opinion in this country, 
and who chiefly reside in portions of Ireland remote from Dublin, will 
be unable to control the landlord and Castle management. 

"The Lord Mayor of Dublin, moreover, the chairman of this committee, 
has already shown his bias by refusing at the meeting of Irish members 
to accept a resolution of sympathy with the distressed peasantry in the 
West. I do not wish to examine the motive of this refusal, but it is a 
significant fact that the passage of this resolution in spite of the opposi- 



304 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

tion of the Lord Mayor led to the refusal of the Duke of Marlborough 
to accept the former's invitation to dinner. 

" In view, however, of your persistent attempts to mislead the American 
people on this question, it now becomes my duty to state plainly for the 
information of the charitable that this money, if sent to the Dublin Man- 
sion House Committee, will be indirectly used for political purposes in 
bolstering up an expiring and tyrannical land system, and that all aid 
from it will be refused to those of the starving peasantry who have 
actively participated in the present agrarian movement. If you wish to 
maintain the character for impartiality which you have assumed in deal- 
ing with our question, you will print this note in as prominent a position 
and with as large type as that which you have devoted to your notice of 
the Mansion House Committee taken under your patronage. 

"Charles S. Parnell." 

The two Irish Provincial delegates, in spite of the opposition of the 
teal and genuine agitators located in this country and urged on by their 
friends on the other side, enjoyed immense popularity with the Irish and 
American masses, who attended their lectures in the different towns and 
cities where they visited. Say what Mr. Parnell would— and his state- 
ments on this point were explicit and by no means misleading — his Irish 
audience would believe that Mr. Parnell always had an arriere pensec to 
fall back upon in the event of talk not succeeding. This was only natural. 
They saw men in the committee surrounding him in whom they had 
every confidence, and justly so. Men whose lives were devoted to serving 
Ireland to make her a nation, and they also knew that the men at home, 
his parliamentary colleagues, were simply Whigs or Liberals in the Home 
Rule garb, and some of these men were on this very Mansion House 
Committee, which was hostile to Mr. Parnell and his aspirations. These 
people would not dream it could be possible that in the whirligig of a 
parliamentary policy to free a nation, some of these men then his oppo- 
nents would become that young tribune's devoted followers, and the 
very principal of fighting the Liberal party then dominating Irish parlia- 
mentary political thought would in course of time be reversed, and that 
the great machine, an independent Irish party in the British Commons, 
would be handed over to the Liberals, and the aim and ambition of its 
members be to sing the praises of an English statesman. 

When Mr. Parnell was nearing the State capital, Albany, N. Y., the 
legislature of the State wished to do him honor and to pay in his person 
their indorsement and approval of the cause of which he was so able an 
exponent and so noble and worthy a representative. 

The following resolution was introduced into the Assembly and Senate 
and carried unanimously : 

" Whereas, Charles S. Parnell, M. P., is now on a visit to the city of 
Albany, and 

"Whereas, we recognize the efforts of this honorable gentleman 
for the relief of starvation in Ireland, therefore 

Resolved, That Charles S. Parnell, M. P., during his visit to the city 
of Albany, be given the privilege of the floor of the Assembly." 

On Mr. Parnell's appearance in the Assembly on January 28, 1880, 
Speaker Husted brought the gavel down with a sharp stroke, and out of 
compliment to their Irish visitor the chamber took a recess. 

General Husted, getting on the floor, warmly welcomed Mr. Parnell 
and introduced him to the members. 

In the mean time the famine continued raging in Ireland ; there was 
plenty of food, but the poor people had no means to procure 
it. There were three deaths from hunger at this date, January 29, near 



MR. PARNELL'S AMERICAN TOUR. 305 

Parsonstovvn. No record is correctly kept of the number of deaths from 
this cause, which take place every year in Ireland, as hunger is the 
parent of so many diseases under which these deaths are registered. It 
is Britain's death roll of victims in the Emerald Isle. On Febuary 2, 
the two Irish Provincialists issued the following manifesto. The fight be- 
tween them and the Parliamentary men and others of Lord Mayor Gray's 
committee was being fought out very fiercely on both sides. To Mr. 
Parnell and Mr. Dillon must be accorded great determination and perse- 
verance, for after all Mr. Parnell represented a very insignificant portion 
of the Parliamentary party at that time. But, as time has since proved, 
this was a mere bid for political power .- 

" To the People of America : 

" A committee has been formed in Dublin since we landed in this 
country, and has appealed to the people of America under the name of 
the Dublin Mansion House Committee for funds to relieve the Irish 
famine. This committee is chiefly composed of landlords and govern- 
ment placemen, avowedly hostile to the people and their aspirations, and 
is therefore peculiarly unsuited as a channel through which to send relief 
to the starving peasantry of Ireland. We felt it our duty on the first 
publication of the names comprising this body to warn the people of 
America that it would refuse assistance to those who are at present resist- 
ing eviction. 

" This fact convinces us of the necessity for renewed exertion on 
our part to baffle the projects so shamelessly put forward by the allies 
and agents of the Mansion House committee in this country. 

" Charles S. Parnell, 
"February 1, 1880. "John Dillon." 

Mr. Parnell was attacked in the press of England, and by the Irish Pro- 
vincial and West British journals. Lord Randolph Churchill attempted 
to contradict a statement he made about the Queen's famine subscription 
in 1847, to which Mr. Parnell replied as follows : 

" To the Editor of the Herald : 

" In reference to Lord Randolph Churchill's contradition of my state- 
ments that the Queen gave nothing to relieve the famine in 1847, I find 
I might have gone still further and have said with perfect accuracy that 
not only did she give nothing, but that she actually intercepted £6000 
of the donation which the Sultan of Turkey desired to contribute to the 
famine fund. In 1847 the Sultan had offered a donation of ^10,000, but 
the English Ambassador at Constantinople was directed by the Queen 
to inform him that her contribution was to be limited to ^2000, and 
that the Sultan could not in good taste give any more than Her Majesty, 
hence the net result to the famine fund by the Queen's action was a loss 
of ^6000. All this is perfectly understood by students of Irish history 
and would have been known to Lord R. Churchill were our history not 
proscribed in English schools. 

" The following passage in D'Arcy Magee's history of the Irish set- 
tlers in North America throws additional light upon the subject : ' The 
Czar, the Sultan, and the Pope sent their rubies and their pearls. The 
Pasha of Egypt, the Shah of Persia, the Emperor of China, the Rajahs of 
India, combined to do for Ireland what her so-styled rulers refused to 
do — to keep her young and old people living in the land. America did 
more than all the rest of the world.' 

•' February 1, 1880. Charles S. Parnell." 



3°6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The Irish-American Nationalists gave Mr. Parnell invaluable support; 
they supported his movement with the object of using the agitation for 
strengthening their hands and so that behind the mask of a public move- 
ment they could more effectually strike the common enemy. Many 
Nationalists, especially those in Ireland, believed this whole idea was 
wrong both in conception and practice ; the " new departure " was a grave 
and serious departure from Irish National politics, because of the utter 
impossibility of the Nationalists ever being able to bring the Provinciaiists 
up to their standard, and of the danger of opening the flood gates and filling 
physical force circles with a stream of weak, sentimental, and theoretical 
views that sad experience has taught Irishmen have had a ruinous ten- 
dency to emasculate their race. 

Mr. Parnell in his trenchant attacks on his natural supporters, the 
agitators, raised up for himself a number of enemies. There were at this 
time three famine funds in the field, that of the Duchess of Marlborough, 
the Dublin Mansion House Committee, and Mr. Parnell's fund. A fourth 
was soon started under the auspices of Mr. James Gordon Bennett, who 
subscribed the munificent sum of $100,000, and the Bennett fund leaped 
into active life, and with the great circulation of the New York Herald 
succeeded in enlisting a number of subscriptions, some for very large 
sums. 

The Dublin Freeman, the property of Lord Mayor Gray, then ably 
assisted by Mr. William O'Brien, resented Mr. Parnell's attack on the 
Mansion House Committee in its issue of February 5, 1880. It pub- 
lished an indorsement of their Committee, signed by three Archbishops 
and nineteen Bishops, also by the Most Reverend Mr. Trench, Protestant 
Archbishop. This roll accused Mr. Parnell of making reckless and 
unwarrantable assertions, but he gained by this attack the support of 
many Nationalists. The Irish-American Society were the men who 
really placed him in power ; he has kicked away the ladder by which he 
climbed to his present position. Time will tell if he was wise. 

In the mean time Mr. Parnell had received the greatest honor ever 
paid to an Irishman : the House of Representatives at Washington, when 
in session, had gracefully and courteously extended to him the privilege 
of the floor to address that august body. 

On January 19 Congress placed this resolution upon its archives and 
on February 2, 1880, Speaker Randall called the House to order at 
eight o'clock. The Speaker directed that the resolution of the 19th of 
January be read, and he stated that in conformity with that resolution he 
had now the honor and pleasure of introducing Charles Stewart Parnell 
of Ireland, who came among them to speak of the distresses of his country. 

Mr. Parnell, who was seated at the clerk's desk, with icy composure 
looked upon the sea of faces that were there to bid him welcome on 
behalf of America — the noblest and freest nation in the world, the land 
that has so hospitably received the suffering patriots of Europe. When 
the applause had subsided, Mr. Parnell returned thanks for the honor 
conferred on him in being permitted to address such an assemblage on 
the state of affairs in his unhappy country. American public opinion 
would be of the greatest importance in enabling them to obtain a settlement of 
the Irish question. He spoke of land in Ireland as being the most press- 
ing question of that country, and he quoted the testimony of the historian 
Froude against the principle of private property in land. He also quoted 
approvingly the New York Nation against the idea of emigration as a 
remedy. He proposed to imitate the example of Prussia and other Con- 
tinental countries, where the feudal tenure had been tried and abandoned. 
He proposed to give the opportunity to every occupying farmer in Ireland 
to become the owner of his own farm. He referred to Mr. John Bright's 



MR. PARNELL'S AMERICAN TOUR. 307 

proposition for a company to advance money for the purchase of Irish 
farms, and criticised Mr. Bright for fearing to ask the English Parliament 
to sanction the principle. In conclusion he said that if she were by the 
force of her public opifiion alone and by the respect with which all peoples 
looked upon any sentiment prevailing in America to obtain for Ireland, with- 
out the shedding of one drop of blood, without drawing the sword, 
without one threatening message aid in the solution of that great question, 
he was proud and happy in the belief that in the way he had mentioned 
and in no other way, America would be an important factor in the 
solution of the Irish land question. As Mr. Parnell concluded his 
address he was applauded by an audience of men who could thoroughly 
appreciate the salient points of his discourse. The House adjourned and 
the ceremonies of the personal introduction of members and others 
to Mr. Parnell was performed by the Speaker in the area in front of the 
reporters' desk. 

Many who favored the " new departure " and who have been trying to 
impress upon Irishmen the immense difference between the agitation of 
Mr. Parnell, and that of his great predecessor Mr. O'Connell, will find in 
this speech, addressed to the Congress of the descendants of the men of 
Lexington the self-same no drop of blood doctrine as distinctly preached 
by Mr. Parnell as it had been in the days of the golden-tongued tribune. 
Mr. Parnell, carried away it is presumed by the justice of Ireland's cause, 
concluded in a very summary manner that its solution should be of as easy 
attainment, and when he informed his American hearers that he proposed 
a certain course to be adopted to settle the farmers in their holdings, he 
appears to have completely lost sight of the essential fact that he had no 
power to carry out his benevolent and kindly intention. He alludes to the 
Prussian Ministers, Stein and Hardenburg, and their establishment of peas- 
ant proprietary in that part of Germany, but these statesmen caused laws to 
be made for their own country. Mr. Parnell would have to appeal to a 
foreign assembly and foreign ministers whose interests run counter 
to Ireland's. Think of a great statesman or an intelligent patriot telling 
his hearers that the public opinion of a great nation would be able to do 
the work of Washington and Lafayette. People can scarcely realize the 
seriousness of the speaker, and yet his audience was most distinguished. 

Mr. Parnell plainly states that he is opposed to the principle of private 
property in land, but he has been trying to establish peasant or occupying 
proprietary, which is undoubtedly private property in land. Irishmen could 
not advocate National ownership of land until such time as Ireland has 
an independent national government. There have "been very strange law 
doctrines preached by men, who have so completely lost sight of the 
great national creed of self-government that they have gone into the 
land question without thinking that it was not all the Irish trouble. 

There was this great difference between Mr. Parnell's Provincial 
agitation and that of Mr. O'Connell's, that while the former preached the 
self-same doctrines of arguing the usurper out of Ireland, and publicly 
condemning the necessity of any resort to force, in private he expressed 
different views, and only asked of the Nationalists to give his peace policy 
a fair trial, and he would be with them in the impossible event (as he 
then believed) of his failure. It was the beginning of that hideous and 
hypocritical policy of Irishmen publicly denouncing what the speaker and 
his friends were actually engaged in privately. This infamous and degrad- 
ing course was termed, paying Britain back in her own coin, stealing a 
leaf of deception from the enemy's state volumes. 

The Dublin Freeman was very wroth with Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon. 
In its issue of February 26, 1880, it speaks of these gentlemen thus : 

" We are compelled in the cause of truth and charity in defense of the 



3o3 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Hierarchy, of the benevolent laity of Ireland, of every religion, in self- 
defense, in the interest of sanity and honor, all the world over to notice 
the extraordinary emanation addressed to the editors of the United States 
in which Parnell and his friends run amuck through all the Irish charit- 
able committees except his own." 

It characterizes Mr. Parnell's attack as a shameless one made on the 
Duchess of Marlborough's committee, and characterized his attack on 
the Mansion House committee as an outrage on all decency, and a 
shameless libel upon an assembly of gentlemen reckoning among them 
the most trusted and respected of the laity as well as Bishops. 

The Freeman asked what Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon had done that 
they should dictate. The Mansion House is intrusted with $400,000, the 
Duchess of Marlborough with $150,000, while the Parnell fund has 
secured only $70,000, though every nerve had been strained. 

The minds of politicians were directed in Britain to the approaching 
general election ; everyone expected that Parliament would be dissolved 
at the close of the session, and that in the autumn the election of a new 
Parliament would take place. One of the many scenes which display 
British contempt for Irish suffering happened during the expiring hours 
of this Parliament. Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell, with tears in his eyes, 
called attention to the prevailing poverty and hunger in Ireland, but he 
spoke to empty benches, for the British legislator preferred the smoke 
room or the dinner table to listening to the old story of Irish distress ; for 
him it was a thrice-told tale and a nuisance ; there was no possibility 
in shaming the stolid Anglo-Saxon on a question of which he was 
weary. 

To the surprise and astonishment of the British public, the session of 
Parliament was suddenly interrupted by the announcement, made by the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Northcote, that Her Majesty's 
Government had decided on appealing to the loyal British Burgesses to 
elect another Commons chamber. This information surprised both coun- 
tries, and it was the subject of conversation in every club, hotel, warehouse, 
factory, and public conveyance. A dissolution in the autumn was expected, 
but this hasty interruption of Parliamentary work and cessation of the 
business of the country until after the throes of a general election set the 
British people wondering. What caused this sudden resolution of the 
Premier's ? This was the question on every tongue. 

Lord Beaconsfield was not long in issuing his election manifesto, 
which he did in the form of a letter to the Irish Lord Lieutenant : 

" No. 10 Downing Street, March 8, 1880. 
" My Lord Duke : 

" The measures respecting the state of Ireland which Her Majesty's 
Government have so anxiously considered with Your Excellency, and in 
which they were much aided by your advice and authority, are now about 
to be submitted for royal assent, and it is at length in the power of 
Ministers to advise the Queen to recur to the sense of her people. The 
art of agitators which represented that England instead of being a gener- 
ous and sympathizing friend was indifferent to the dangers and suffer- 
ings of Ireland, has been defeated by measures at once liberal and pru- 
dent, which Parliament almost unanimously sanctioned. During the six 
years of the present administration the improvement of Ireland and the 
•contest of our fellow-countrymen of that island have much occupied the 
care of the Ministry, and they may remember with satisfaction that in this 
period they have solved one of the most difficult problems connected with 
its government and people by establishing a system of public education 
open to all classes and creeds. Nevertheless, a danger in its ultimate 



MR. PARNELL'S AMERICAN TOUR. 309 

results scarcely less disastrous than pestilence or famine, which now 
engages Your Excellency's anxious attention, distracts that country. A 
portion of the population is attempting to sever the constitutional tie 
which unites it to Great Britain, in that bond which has favored the power 
and prosperity of both. It is to be hoped that all men of light and learn- 
ing will resist this destructive doctrine. 

" The strength of the nation depends on the unity of feeling which 
should pervade the United Kingdom and its widespread dependencies. 
The first duty of an English minister should be to consolidate the co- 
operation which renders irresistible a community educated as our own in 
an equal love of liberty and law. 

" And yet there are some who challenge the expediency of the imperial 
•character of the realm. Having attempted and failed to enfeeble our colonies 
.by their policy of decomposition, they may perhaps now recognize in the 
disintegration of the United Kingdom a mode which will not only accom- 
plish, but precipitate their purpose. The immediate dissolution of Parlia- 
ment will afford an opportunity to the nation to decide upon a course 
which will materially influence its future fortunes and shape its destiny. 
Rarely in this country has there been an occasion more critical. The 
power of England and the peace of Europe will largely depend on the 
verdict of the country. Her Majesty's present ministers have hitherto 
been enabled to secure that peace so necessary to the welfare of a\» 
civilized countries and so peculiarly the interest of our otun, but this ineffa- 
ble blessing cannot be obtained by the passive principle of non-interfer- 
ence. Peace rests on the presence, not to say the ascendancy, of England 
in the councils of Europe. Even at this moment the doubt supposed to 
be inseparable from a popular election, if it does not diminish, certainly 
arrests her influence, and is a main reason for not delaying an appeal to 
the national voice. Whatever may be its consequences to Her Majesty's 
present advisers, may it return to Westminister a Parliament not 
unworthy of the power of England and resolved to maintain it ! 

" I have the honor to be, My Lord Duke, your faithful servant, 

" Beaconsfield." 

The London Daily News, the leading organ of the Liberal party, com- 
menting on this manifesto, said : 

" Lord Beaconsfield is the master of pompous words, and they have stood 
him in such good stead that he hopes to win an election by this means." 

Mr. William Shaw, Home Rule leader, issued a reply to the Tory 
chieftain. He said : 

" The Prime Minister has not thought it beneath his position to issue 
an electioneering manifesto, placing false issues before the electors of the 
empire, and tending to excite the worst passions of the ignorant. 

" There has been no Ministry within my memory by which less has 
been done for the improvement and content of the people of Ireland. 
The distress now so general, deepening in some places into famine, was at 
■an early period brought before the attention of Her Majesty'sGovernment, 
and if the measures then earnestly recommended had been promptly and 
generously adopted, the widespread suffering would have been to a 
great extent prevented, and the people would not have been pauperized. 
I charge the government with gross and culpable ignorance and neglect. 
They have not taken timely measures to meet the emergency. The 
Prime Minister, not for the first time, misrepresents the general opinion 
of the people of Ireland as expressed by a majority of her representa- 
tives in favor of self-government in domestic affairs, as if it meant the 
dismemberment of the empire. No one knows better than the Prime 
Minister that that is not a true statement of the case. 



3IO THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES 

"We mean by Home Rule not that the connection should be de- 
stroyed, but that the relationship may be placed on a healthy, natural, 
honest basis, and we seek this object by strictly loyal and constitutional 
means. The Prime Minister knows this, but he thinks it a good cry for 
the English electors, and he sends his party forth to the constitutional 
struggle with a lie in their right hand. There is another Irish question 
on which the Government has been more reactionary than on others. I 
mean the land question. I call on the Irish people, north and south, 
to answer the insulting missive of the Prime Minister by returning an 
overwhelming majority at the coming election pledged to the settlement 
of the great vital national question ; pledged to give ample facilities for 
the creation of a peasant proprietary wherever possible, to restore, define, 
and legalize tenant right in Ulster, and extend it to the whole of Ireland. 
We must sink all minor differences, put aside all personal feelings, and 
lend every energy to effect this great object." 

Having read the manifesto of the British Tory chief and noted the 
Irish Home Rule leader's reply, he being a strict party man in British poli- 
tics, it will be noticed that this reply to Lord Beaconsfield bears as much 
the tone of the Liberal politician combating Tory principles, as it does 
that of the Irish Home Ruler. Both gentlemen speak of the British 
Empire as if it were a homogenous entity, having one central controlling 
government. The British Empire is in part composed of Crown colonies, 
which are governed by a despotism sent out from Britain to control and 
manage the affairs of each colony. The inhabitants of these Crown 
colonies have no voice whatsoever in the administration or making of 
their laws. A governor and council having both legislative and executive 
control manage the affairs of each. The largest and most valuable of 
these Crown dependencies is India, where over two hundred million of 
people are governed under a military despotism for the sole benefit and 
well being of the British people. These local satraps or governors, who 
conduct the business of these Crown colonies to a great extent, shape their 
policy without very much reference to the London Government, and are 
principally influenced by a small clique of British merchants who have 
interests and dwell in the several Crown settlements. Of course these 
governors are subject to recall at the pleasure of the Home Administra- 
tion, but unless when they themselves wish for a change, or there occurs 
some vital difference between them and the gentlemen in Downing Street, 
changes in these governors are infrequent. These colonies have no 
representation in the London Parliament, which is falsely called Imperial. 
It is simply a Parliament for the United Kingdom of Britain, and mock- 
ingly so for that unwilling Western island Ireland. Besides the Crown 
colonies, there are a few partly self-governed. Western Australia is one 
of these ; they have their own legislature, but their executive is appointed 
by the Crown Ministers. 

Next we have the strangest part of the empire, the self-governing 
colonies, of which the largest and most influential is the Dominion of 
Canada ; these colonies are virtually independent nations ; their relations 
with the Home Government are more matters of sentiment than reality. 
They have colonial agents in London looking after their interests, like the 
Ministers of an independent government, they levy protective duties 
against British manufactures, as would a foreign nation having their Cus- 
tom Houses under the control of their own governments, which spring 
from their Parliaments as do the Ministry in Britain ; they have their own 
National militia and armed cruisers to look after their revenue and enforce 
their customs duties. They pay not one cent of tribute to the British 
Crown, and in no manner contribute to support the Imperial expenditure. 
They pay a handsome salary to a Governor-General, who represents the 



MR. PARNELL'S AMERICAN TOUR. 311 

Queen, but he is only a figurehead in the state. The British Ministry 
know full well he dare not take issue with any act of the government of 
the country. There exists no such arrangement in any other empire or 
nation in the world. These independent governments, falsely called 
dependencies, contribute nothing toward the flag, which is in fiction sup- 
posed to protect them — only the prestige they give Britain ; it is this pres- 
tige of empire she loves to herald with pomposity before the world — 
pomposity that has so little physical strength to sustain it. Any strain 
such as a European war would put upon her resources, would be likely to 
test the loyalty of these self-governing dependencies, if exposed to the 
risks of an attack by a powerful enemy in a cause in which they had no 
interests involved, and Britain's European wars would be necessarily of 
this nature. Such a war would separate these possessions supposed to be 
united in one Empire. 

Lord Beaconsfield speaks in his manifesto of " some party " — it is to 
be presumed he meant the Liberal — having failed to enfeeble the colonies 
by a policy of decomposition. If he thinks self-government in the 
colonies decomposition he is not supported by facts. On the contrary, 
Home Rule has developed and improved both Canada and the Australian 
colonies. People fail to see where the strength of these self-governed 
parts of the empire can in any manner strengthen the empire itself. The 
interests of Canada or Australia are not the same as those of Britain. An 
ex-British Cabinet Minister, who has come to these United States to try 
and settle the Canadian fishery dispute, has publicly stated that British 
interest in this question was indirect. Her great anxiety is fear of war 
with America, which would probably eventuate in the disruption of her 
empire. Australia having an interest in French occupation of the New 
Hebrides, compelled the London government to take action about this 
question in her favor, even though Britain in carrying out this colonial 
request might get involved in an angry dispute with France. This is the 
condition of the empire which Lord Beaconsfield stated in his manifesto 
it is the duty of every British Minister to consolidate ; Irish Provincialists 
demand the self-same position in the empire as the Dominion of Canada 
or the Australian Government. Should that result in breaking the so- 
called constitutional tie, then that tie is already broken, and if what those 
Irishmen demand is the dismemberment of the empire, that empire must 
be dismembered. If Canada or Australia contribute nothing toward 
Imperial expenditure, why should Ireland ? These colonies are peopled 
to a large extent by British people, and if their own kith and kin, who are 
said to be within the empire, do not support any portion of that empire, 
why should the Irish, who are a foreign people ? Place this question in 
what light people may, in equity Ireland is entitled, to say the very least, 
to the self-same measure of independence enjoyed by the Canadian 
Dominion. 

Mr. Shaw characterizes the Prime Minister's manifesto as one deliber- 
ately putting false issues before the electors of the empire. Now the 
facts are, there does not exist, nor has there ever been any Imperial 
Parliament representing the British empire. The London Parliament 
is composed of British deputies only, and those of Ireland. Not 
even do the Islands of Guernsey, Jersey, or the Isle of Man, which are so 
near, send representatives to this so-called Imperial Parliament. And it 
is the basest of hypocrisy for British Ministers to say that if Ireland was 
to get self-government, this empire would be dismembered any more 
than it is now, or has been. Irishmen are full well aware that equity 
and right does not enter into this question in the minds of English states- 
men, and that is the reason why Nationalists deplore the folly of earnest 
and good Irishmen wasting their lives and whatever resources their race 



312 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

can give them in the impossible task of getting back self-government by- 
peaceful means. 

The news of the dissolution of Parliament was a great surprise to Mr. 
Parnell. It disconcerted all his arrangements. Mr. Biggar, M. P., Mr. 
Lysaght Finnigen, M. P., and his immediate Parliamentary supporters, 
cabled for his speedy return. 

The Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain, controlled by Mr. 
Parnell's supporters, issued the following election manifesto : 

" Lord Beaconsfield has issued in the guise of a letter to the Viceroy 
of Ireland a declaration of war upon your country and your friends. The 
Ministry is seeking to obtain a renewed term of office by sowing dissen- 
sions and hatred between Englishmen and Irishmen, and Lord Beacons- 
field's vicious manifesto directly appeals to the worst passions and prej- 
udices for the purpose of stirring up Englishmen against Irish National- 
ists. The Ministry neither knows nor cares how to relieve our distressed 
fellow-countrymen. Lord Beaconsfield's foreign policy has been an 
inglorious and disastrous failure. Vote against him as you would vote 
against the enemy of your country. 

"Frank Hugh O'Donnell, Dungarvin. 

"James Lysaght Finnigen, Ennis. 

"Alexander M. Sullivan, Louth. 

" John O'Connor Power, Mayo. 

"Justin McCarthy, Longford." 

Mr. Parnell canceled all his engagements and hurried back to New 
York to take steamer for Ireland. 

He held a conference at the Fifth Avenue Hotel previous to his 
departure ; sixty gentlemen were invited to meet him, when the foundation 
of the Irish National Land League of America was laid. Mr. M. D. 
Gallagher of New York city was chosen president of the first branch of 
the League, which as Branch " One " so ably and financially aided the 
National League movement. Mr. Gallagher, who is a strong and deter- 
mined Nationalist, and who at that time was a thorough believer in the 
efficacy of " legal agitation," wrote a pamphlet in furtherance of the League 
principles, which had an appendix written by a Boston gentleman — 
an American, a relative or connection of Mr. Parnell's, which if published 
to-day would meet Mr. Parnell's condemnation for the outspoken and 
radical views of the writer. Delegates from New York, Philadelphia, 
Baltimore, Washington, New Haven, and Jersey City attended. Dr. 
Kearney of New York was elected chairman of the meeting and T. F. 
Lynch of Brooklyn secretary. At the close of their labors, Mr. Parnell 
expressed his entire satisfaction and promised to return to America as 
soon as possible. He urged his countrymen not to let the work in which 
they were engaged slacken in the meantime, and bade them remember 
that the cause of charity still appealed to them. The famine-causing 
land system, he said, remain uncrushed, and therefore there remained good 
work for Irishmen. No one helped more energetically in this " good 
work" than did the newly elected president for Branch " One," Mr. M. D. 
Gallagher. He formed over fifty branches himself by his exertions in 
addressing League meetings in every direction. 

The time was now drawing near for Mr. Parnell's departure. A 
committee of 'longshoremen presented him with a patriotic and com- 
plimentary address and the substantial testimony of $1000 for the relief 
fund. A committee of County Wicklow men presented him with a testi- 
monial and gold badge, and the reception committee presented him with 
a complimentary address. Mr. Parnell in his reply thanked them for the 



MR. PARNELL'S AMERICAN TOUR. 313 

magnificent hospitality accorded to himself and the- sympathy extended 
to suffering Ireiand. 

Mr. Parnell was escorted to the wharf by the committee and immense 
crowds of enthusiastic supporters ; a heavy snowstorm in no manner 
chilled the ardor of their determination to do every possible honor to 
the then earnest young Irishman. 

The 69th Regiment, with Colonel Cavanaugh at their head, acted as 
guard of honor. The crowded procession moved on through the falling 
snow. When the visitors who were on board the Baltic to bid Mr. Parnell 
good-by were asked to go ashore, they went to the end of the pier, 
where the Laura M. Starin was waiting to take the committee on board 
to escort Mr. Parnell down the bay. 

As the Baltic passed the pier out into the river the band of the 69th 
Regiment played ; hats waved, and the immense crowd cheered the 
parting guest, while Mr. Parnell bowed his acknowledgements until his 
pale face passed out of sight. 

Speed the parting ship ; there are stirring scenes before the Irish 
voyager ! 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

(1880.) 

GENERAL ELECTION. 

Royal Reception of Mr. Parnell at Queenstown — Scene at Queenstown Junction — Recep- 
tion in Cork — Address from the Nationalists — No Belief in Parliamentary Success — 
Banquet at Victoria Hotel, Cork — Mr. Parnell's Speeches — Addressing the Crowds in 
Patrick Street from the Hotel Windows — Mr. Biggar's Speech — " Ireland A r eeds 
Another Hartman " — Mr. Parnell's Exertions in Ireland — Provincial Members Every- 
where — Chevalier O'Clery — Row in Enniscorthy — Mr. Parnell Nominated for Cork, 
Mayo, and Meath — Nicholas Dan Murphy — Bishop Delany's Manifesto Denouncing 
Parnell — Triumphant Return of Parnell for Cork — Parnellites Elected in Numerous 
Constituencies — Dublin Election — Chevalier O'Clery and the Cork Election — His 
Defeat in County Wexford — John Barry, Parnellite, Elected — Nomination of Mr. 
Kettle, Parnellite, for County Cork — Opposition of Shaw and Coldthurst — Bishops 
and Priests against Parnell in Cork — Exciting Election Scenes — Scene in Middle- 
town — Mr. Hyde of Killeagh on Evictions — Captain Smith Barry — Tableau — Mr. 
Parnell Presented with Freedom of Cork City — Address to his Constituents — Elected 
for Cork, Meath, and Mayo — Unprecedented Honor — Kettle Defeated by Small 
Majority — Mr. Parnell's Letter to Chicago Daily News — The Most Powerful Ministry 
Cannot Withstand Them — Cry of " No More Coercion Now" — Rout of the Tories 
— The Liberal Party Restored to Power — Great Irish Rejoicing at the Appointment 
of Mr. Wm. Forster — Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister — Great Joy in Ireland that 
Bright and Chamberlain have Joined the New Ministry — Mr. Parnell Elected Leader 
of the Parliamentary Party — " Grand Old Man" — Harbinger of Hope — Ireland to 
be Governed by Irish Ideas — Approaching Great Victory for the Crusade of Shame. 

As Mr. Parnell voyaged home in the good ship Baltic, preparations 
were being made by the people in Ireland to give him a truly royal 
reception, using the accustomed phrase " royal " to denote the magnifi- 
cent ovation that awaited him at Queenstown, Cork, and throughout 
Ireland. No British sovereign or princeling could ever hope to receive 
from the people such a demonstration of welcome as that which awaited 
the arrival of Charles Stewart Parnell on his return from America. 

The Irish Nationalists clung to him, the more the West-British element 
attacked him ; they were determined to give him a united support to show 
the world how earnestly, and almost unanimously, Ireland yearned for 
self-government. Not alone a portion of the people held these views, 
as stated by Lord Beaconsfield to the Duke of Marlborough in his letter, 
but they were (and are still) the doctrines of the great masses, the heart, 
the soul, the brains of the nation. The only difference Irishmen have 
on this subject of native rule is the means by which they can procure it. 

Men of the physical force school (and they are more than nine-tenths 
of the real earnest workers in Ireland) have no choice in the path by 
which the desired goal can be gained. Britain has given Ireland her 
answer in no hesitating manner ; she has repeatedly and defiantly told 
her she will not concede to Ireland her peaceful demands, and unless 
the Irish act as curs undeserving of freedom, they must appeal to the 
only alternative left to nations, or be wiped out and spat upon as a race. 
If such an ineffable blessing as the attainment of self-government could 
be pursued peacefully, men would not incur the horrors of British dun- 
geons and the doom of the scaffold to try and obtain their nation's liber- 
ation from slavery. Irishmen would not expose themselves to the con- 
tumely of some of their own untaught and misguided countrymen the 

314 



GENERAL ELECTION. 315 

Provincialists, who are so steeped in generations of serfdom as not to 
appreciate the nobility of the sacrifice. 

There are possibly some Irishmen so maddened by the wrongs and 
crimes of centuries inflicted on their country by the foreign invader that 
they thirst for revenge ; but the number of these is few. The great 
majority of the people are not seeking revenge to satisfy any appetite of 
hatred. Those who know the Irish Nationalists well can speak most 
empathically that no such feeling animates their countrymen. There 
was no such feeling in the breast of Warren at Bunker Hill or Washing- 
ton at Trenton, although both were seeking to kill and destroy their 
country's enemies. Irishmen are fully satisfied that for them it is an 
absolute necessity to carry out the most destructive campaign possible 
against England, and if possible in England itself, no matter at what 
sacrifice of life to themselves as a people (for such losses must be 
infinitesimal compared to what they are compelled to suffer every year 
under the continued drains of starvation and emigration). They be- 
lieve in pursuing this course because no nation similarly situated could 
appeal to any remedy but force. There is no court of last resort 
between nations but war. It may be deplorable that humanity cannot 
avoid the evil. Ireland has never had peace ; whether Irishmen try 
peaceful Provincialism and appeal to her enemy, or not, the results are 
the same. The unrelenting foe goes on unceasing in his war of extermi- 
nation — the destruction of Ireland's national existence he feels is for 
him a matter of vital importance. Ireland has no alternative but either to 
be blotted out from among the nations or strike back fiercely and try to 
destroy her invader. 

This year in Ireland's history, 1880, the " new departure" had ripened 
and begun to bear fruit, rosy looking and luscious to the gaze, but ashes 
(as has been proven) to the taste. The Provincialist campaign of shame 
created by O'Connell and argued by that great orator to hopeless failure, 
again attempted by the Tenant League for a few years, taken up by 
Isaac Butt and the Federalists, was at this period revivified with the 
imaginary aid of Parliamentary obstruction. If ever such a programme 
could be successful it ought to have been at this time when a people in 
unity of thought all over the globe made the heavens ring again with their 
clamor for freedom, but only to hear their voices come back upon them 
with the enemy's shout of refusal and coercion. 

The Irish people were trying to heal a sore, while the foreign body 
that caused it was festering and pressing on the wound. There can be no 
cure for Ireland's gashes but the complete removal of the shackles whose 
rasping, biting pressure excoriates her flesh. 

As the White Star liner entered the magnificent harbor of the Cove of 
Cork, a tug steamer came alongside. As soon as the Baltic came to her 
moorings, a deputation of Irish Provincialists went on board to welcome 
back the man chosen as their public leader. This Land League deputation 
consisted of W. H. O'Sullivan, M. P., J. G. Biggar, M. P., Lysaght Finnigen, 
M. P., and a number of other gentlemen, a deputation from the Home 
Rule League, from the Cork Farmer's Club, and from the students of the 
Queens College, Cork, and the organization still styled the Butt Election 
Committee of Limerick also sent members to greet Mr. Parnell. Addresses 
were presented by those deputations welcoming Mr. Parnell back to Ire- 
land and congratulating him upon the success of his mission in America. 
The address of the Land League concluded by expressing a hope that 
Mr. Parnell had sped across the waters like another Perseus to save the 
Andromeda of nations from the political monster now threatening her with 
national destruction. Mr. W. H. O'Sullivan, in addressing Mr. Parnell on 
the part of the Home Rule League, said that many constituencies in Ire- 



316 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

land were waiting Mr. Parnell's return to know whether he approved of 
the selection which they had made of candidates. Parnell in returning 
thanks said, that in America he had already had overwhelming proofs of the 
utter failure of the pro-British press of Ireland and England to deprive 
him of his character with his countrymen in America. He might give 
them some idea of the magnitude of these endeavors when he said a con- 
stant manufacture of lies had been cabled across to Ireland, while on this 
side of the Atlantic a similar manufacture was going on and the lies 
cabled to America. He wished to express his disapointment that 
at least one journal which assumed to itself the character of representative 
of the National and Liberal feeling in Dublin* and another in the south of 
lreland,f had lent themselves to this base attempt on the part of the Eng- 
lish newspaper press. 

The scene at Queenstown Junction was one not likely to be forgotten 
by anyone present. The Youghal men and others assembled there, and 
while the huge procession of trades was forming with their banners and 
music, Mr. Parnell had to make another address. 

If Irishmen would only work as well as they demonstrate, which latter 
they do so often with premature expressions of joy, they might then 
indeed eventually meet to celebrate the glorious triumph of their freedom 
from foreign rule. 

On Mr. Parnell's arrival in Cork there was a monster demonstration 
of tradesmen and societies ; the streets rang with cheers and the music of 
the many bands playing "See the Conquering Hero Comes," mingled 
with the national Irish music that floated on the air. From Patrick's 
Bridge up to the end of Patrick's Street, was packed one dense mass of 
people. The youth and beauty of this lovely city by the Lee went out to 
welcome their hero's return ; handkerchiefs fluttered in fair hands from 
the windows of Cork's great thoroughfare. A stranger visiting the city 
would think it was the return of some victor crowned with the laurels of 
success, and not a young patriot starting out on a mission of trying to 
shame his country's foe into surrender, so immense was this great rejoicing 
displayed by the people. What a strange and incomprehensible race are 
the Irish ! Well might the English call them imaginative. 

At the Cork Terminus Mr. Parnell was presented with an address 
from the Nationalists of Cork, in which they stated that they felt that 
words were inadequate to express their sense of the obligation they felt 
toward him for his efforts among the great nation at the other side of 
the Atlantic on behalf of the down-trodden people of Ireland. They 
could not withhold their admiration from a man who in any sphere used 
his efforts to better the condition of his country, but they felt bound to add, 
that it was perfectly useless to attempt to obtain concessions from England 
through Parliamentary representation. 

This same statement was repeated to Mr. Parnell in the writer's pres- 
ence, in the Victoria Hotel reading-room, Cork, during the Kettle election. 
Does he really believe still in this delusion of shaming England ? 

Mr. Biggar, M. P., said that the only possible leader of the Irish 
people and the Irish party was Mr. Parnell, and they should make him 
dictator at this general election. 

That was a busy day in the southern capital; the patriotic proprietor 
of the Victoria Hotel, Robert Wilson, was in his element making prepa- 
rations for the grand banquet which was to take place in his hotel that 
evening in honor of Mr. Parnell. He rushed around greeting friends 
with his kindly smile of welcome, and giving orders to the rushing 
attendants. 

At the banquet in the evening, Mr. Parnell was entertained by the 

* The Freeman s Journal. f Cork Examiner. 



GENERAL ELECTION. 317 

enthusiastic, warm-hearted, and hospitable Munster men. Mr. D. Riordan, 
President of the Cork Farmers' Club, was in the chair ; Mr. Parnell sat 
at his right hand ; near him sat Mr. J. G. Biggar, M. P., Mr. Patrick Egan, 
the late President of the Irish National League of America, then one of 
the guiding spirits of the Irish Land League, Mr. Lysaght Finnigen, 
M. P., Mr. VV. H. O'Sullivan, M. P., Mr. T. D. Healey, Mr. James Red- 
path of America, Mr. Michael Davitt, and Mr. Kenny, who with others 
occupied seats at the head table. 

The chairman, in proposing the health of Mr. Parnell, said that but 
for his conduct half of their country would be dying of starvation. Mr. 
Parnell, M. P., who was received with enthusiastic applause and prolonged 
cheers, gave a glowing account of his experience in America. At Phila- 
delphia, he said, Mr. Dillon and himself addressed a meeting of which 
one-half had to go away from the doors, and there were no deadheads, 
no orators, and no music. They visited sixty-two cities during the two 
months they were in America and the net result was $200,000, of which 
$125,000 were already in the hands of the National Land League. He had 
no doubt if he could have remained for another month he could have sent 
over $500,000. At Washington he said an honor had been conferred upon 
him, which was unprecedented ; namely, that of addressing the House of 
Representatives in session. He wished to refer to some matters which he 
could perhaps speak about more fully and properly than others could. 

During his visit to America he was informed upon the highest ecclesi- 
astical authority, that the Government of England had attempted to influ- 
ence the Pope and the American bishops against their movement. He 
was informed of this on such authority that he could not doubt it for a 
moment, but he could not of course mention names either in public now 
or in private hereafter. With regard to their future Parliamentary policy, 
what did they want their representatives to do in Parliament ? Did they 
want them to sit and admire each other ? It was a matter of fact that 
the only party that had achieved anything during the last seven wasted 
years of Parliament was the active party of Irish members. 

Some confusion arose when Mr. Parnell spoke of the course the 
Dublin Freeman had taken in attacking him. There were a few dissidents 
to this opinion of his, and when it is recollected that such firm supporters 
and followers of Mr. Parnell as Mr. Dwyer Gray and Mr. William O'Brien 
are now (1887), were then engaged writing on that journal, it is not to 
be wondered at that some of their sympathizers were present. 

With regard to the land question he believed that not many years 
would elapse before they would see this one last remaining prop of Eng- 
lish misgovernment in Ireland broken to pieces. Mr. Parnell avoided 
all reference to the policy of his party in Parliament, and to the changed 
circumstances with which they will again take part in the proceedings of 
the House. 

Mr. Biggar, M. P., in reply to the toast "The Irish Parliamentary 
Party," in the course of an able and incisive address said they had seen 
what Hartman had done in Russia, and if the constitutional 
course they were pursuing at present failed in its objects, he 
thought Ireland might be able to produce another Hartman, 
and probably with better results. 

Joseph Brady, you were then living in the pride of youth, health, and 
happiness in your native city of Dublin, the capital of your enslaved 
country, when this prophecy foreshadowing your public appearance in 
Ireland's war against her assassin destroyers was uttered at a banquet 
hall in the City of Cork. The sterling Irishman, although Provincialist 
leader, who spoke these ominous words, uttered the honest sentiments of 
his heart. You were then enrolled in the National ranks, believing that 



3i8 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the edge of a sharp steel blade alone could cut the thongs that bound 
your native land in slavery. When these Provincialists found the time 
had come to fulfill this prophecy (for which action all true men honor 
them), you volunteered with thousands of other good men and true to offer 
your young life and the unwritten romance of your Sarah Curran upon 
the altar of your country's freedom. When in the toils of the enemy 
these Provincialists basely and cowardly deserted you and your gallant 
comrades, left you all alone helpless and in want to die, while their 
treasury was filled with the gold so lavishly bestowed upon them by your 
exiled brothers the Irish-American Nationalists. Nay, more, they foully 
tried in alliance with the London Times to slander your memory, and to 
fasten upon your immortal name the stain of murder, they — from out 
whose ranks came their one heroic effort — the order to enroll the 
patriots, of which you and your dead comrades were among the first in 
nobility of character and sterling manly worth. And to-day (1887) they 
are trying to prove before mankind that they never were your associates, 
and with criminal intent to stain their nation with crime, they are hailing 
as a victory their repudiation of the ever living Truth. 

Justice may come slowly, but 'twill come as certain as that truth and 
virtue exist. When posterity will erect an apotheosis to Joseph Brady 
and his martyred comrades, the memory of these Provincialists (which 
they themselves left a foul stain upon while living) will meet with the 
execration of honorable and virtuous mankind. 

This speech of Mr. Biggar's was received with loud and prolonged 
applause. The Nationalists applauded because by their utterances they 
felt certain that these advanced Provincialists would come over en masse 
to their standard and give to the nation's cause the benefit of their public 
prestige, and that Charles Stewart Parnell, with the fiery blood of Iron- 
sides leaping through his veins, would be found like another Lord Edward 
or Owen Roe, in the vanguard of the struggle leading on his countrymen 
in their war for independence. 

The Provincialists applauded, because they believed that by high- 
sounding threats the enemy would surrender without any necessity for 
following up strong language by daring deeds. 

But not one at that banquet table from Mr. Parnell down to the 
humblest, ever for an instant thought it needful to offer the smallest 
rebuke to the manly Mr. Biggar, who upon that occasion had the courage 
of his convictions. 

Whatever may be said -of the Russian Nihilists by friends or foes, their 
cause is distinctly different from Ireland's. They wish to change a native 
despotic government to a native constitutional one, but this Russian des- 
potism does nothing to stop the natural development of their own country — 
quite the contrary. 

Irishmen, on the other hand, wish to get rid of a foreign government, 
whose interests are opposed to theirs, and which is strangling their existence 
as a people and draining their resources from their natural channels, 
breeding poverty and corruption over the land; hence they wish to estab- 
lish native rule. Despotism has not implanted in the Russian breast that 
cowardly slavery which the cunningly contrived system of alien rule has 
done with many Irishmen. Russian Nihilists do not slander and abuse 
their imprisoned comrades, or try to stain the memories of their dead 
ones, and call this cowardice diplomacy ; it has been left to Irish 
Provincialists to practice this degrading and cowardly offense. Mr. 
Biggar, to his credit be it recorded, never joined in this campaign of 
slander instituted for false motives of diplomacy by his friends against 
men whose silence they have counted upon to permit their country and 
the party of action to be degraded by renegades and cowards. Mr. 



GENERAL ELECTION. 3 l 9 

Biggar gave them no aid ; he has never been put on record for slandering 
the memory of those whose lips are sealed in the grave. 

Mr. Parnell at that time courted the assistance of the party of action. 
The principal supporters of the Young Tribune came from- their ranks, 
and at that time he was undoubtedly sincere and thought he was prepared 
to take any steps to emancipate his suffering nation. Mr. Biggar 
was his chief supporter in the House, the father of the obstructive tactics 
which brought Mr. Parnell to such prominence and popularity, which 
ordinary Parliamentary agitation would never have done. He heard this 
determined patriot boldly tell the leading Irish Nationalists present that 
if Britain would not peacefully surrender to Ireland her stolen right of 
self-government that Ireland might produce another Hartman. The hour 
came and Ireland produced many thousand Nationalists of that caliber, 
men who dared everything in their country's cause. And when a small 
section of them was captured and died at the hands of the enemy's execu- 
tioner, this young man, the associate friend and leader of the Irish 
advanced Nationalist, foully reviled their memory in the presence of his 
country's enemies. Alas ! what a frightful change does Parliamentary life 
make in men who were once Irish patriots. 

The election of 1880 received in Ireland renewed national energy by 
the presence of Mr. Parnell. He must have spent the greater portion 
of his nights in railway carriages, for he hurried about in all directions 
through the country to see that the proper men were nominated for the 
various constituencies, north, south, east, and west ; the fiery and deter- 
mined spirit which this apparently icy young gentleman spread over the 
island became contagious, and his lieutenants were in no way behind in 
seconding his energies. 

One of the men whom Mr. Parnell was determined to oust from the 
false position as Home Rule member was Mr. Patrick Keyes O'Clery, 
one of the members for the County Wexford. Mr. O'Clery had been 
for some time in the Papal army, but never under fire. He received the 
title of Chevalier from the late Pope Pius IX., and was socially a 
pleasant, entertaining gentleman. He was fond of associating with the 
London literati. He was a member of the Garrick Club, London, or 
if not, a very frequent visitor to that hallowed haunt of the artistic world. 
He was a Home Rule Whig and Mr. Parnell very properly thought that 
such a county as Wexford ought to be represented by a more patriotic 
Irishman. The Chevalier O'Clery had, however, a strong following in 
the town of Enniscorthy and the neighborhood. His great champion 
was a fiery little clergyman who was truly patriotic, but spending most of 
his time in a small country parish, did not really know the political 
character of the gallant chevalier ; his title had a great influence with the 
good priest, who was indignant with Mr. Parnell for what he termed intru- 
sion into county politics. Mr. Parnell's candidate in opposition to 
the gallant chevalier was Mr. John Barry, a well-known Irish Nation- 
alist, and one who had hitherto believed in more stern measures than 
talk. 

A public meeting was held in Enniscorthy in support of the rival can- 
didates. Wexford men were supposed to listen calmly to the difference 
of views expressed by each. Mr. Parnell attended this meeting. The 
fiery little clergyman came into town with some two hundred of his 
parishioners. This meeting was held on Sunday, March 28. 

Passion cast prudence to the winds, and a disgraceful scene arose — the 
first time that Mr. Parnell met any opposition or insult at the hands of 
his countrymen. Those who participated in this unseemly row were 
sorry soon after it occurred. But the feeling in Enniscorthy was very 
bitter during the election. Mr. Michael Davitt came a few days after to 



320 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

try and make peace, but was unsuccessful ; he found Parnellites and anti- 
Parnellites beneath the shadow of Vinegar Hill. 

The British press and the Irish organs opposed to Mr. Parnell tried 
to make what capital they could out of the transaction, and, strange to say, 
the Freeman's Journal of Dublin entered into the wordy fray. Mr. Parnell 
contradicted some report of the occurrence published in the columns of 
that paper, and in its issue of April 3 it replied as follows : 

" Mr. Parnell having four days after the event contradicted our report 
of the Enniscorthy affair, we feel called upon in self-vindication to make 
the following statement : One of us saw Mr. Parnell collared by a gentle- 
man and forced violently back. Another of us saw him struck in the face 
with something which left its mark, and which Mr. Parnell, who had the 
best opportunity of knowing, declared to one of us about an hour later 
to be an egg." 

The towns of Wexford and New Ross and, indeed, almost the whole 
of the county, were very indignant at the assault made on Mr. Parnell, 
and the indiscreet action of his supporters did not improve the chances 
of the gallant chevalier. 

Cork city at this time was represented by one Tory and one Whig. 
The Tory was Mr. Wm. Goulding, a patent manure merchant, who slipped 
in through a division in the Liberal electorate putting up two candidates, 
which divided their supporters. The Whig was Mr. Nicholas Dan 
Murphy, one of the respectable and wealthy Irish Catholic Liberals that 
Catholic emancipation blessed Ireland with. Nicholas Dan was a tower 
of strength in Cork city and county, related to many of the wealthiest 
families in the neighborhood; and so far as personal virtues were con- 
cerned, Mr. Murphy was a very exemplary gentleman. But British rule 
in Ireland was almost part of his prayers, and he considered he had a 
right divine to represent his native city in London. When Mr. Parnell, 
a stranger to the social and influential families of Cork, announced himself 
as a candidate a few days before the nomination, much to the surprise and 
consternation of the great Whig families, Bishop Delany of Cork, a good 
old Whig, was horrified, and immediately that powerful body of men, the 
priests, were enlisted by their Bishop to teach the intruder a lesson for 
his arrogance and presumption in daring to oppose the good and great 
Nicholas Dan. 

There were, of course, among the priests some few exceptions who 
helped Mr. Parnell, but these gentlemen were soon after relegated to 
poor county parishes for their action in the election. 

Bishop Delaney issued a declaration of principles, and in no measured 
tones denounced Mr. Parnell. The following is a portion of the Bishop's 
address : 

" The curse and bane of the country is that spirit of disunion among 
our people which has enabled our enemies to humiliate the whole nation. 
On a late occasion, when Irishmen of all creeds, all positions, and all 
shades of opinion were associated for a work of charity, an apple of 
discord was flung into their midst, and the noble generosity of the 
American people was in imminent danger of being checked. 

" The person who made these misstatements, a self-elected dictator, is 
going about 'stumping the country,' as the phrase is, and directing 
various towns, counties, and boroughs whom they are to have to repre- 
sent them. He comes here to dictate to the people of Cork, but he has 
met with well-merited reproof in many places already, and I am greatly 
mistaken in the people of Cork if he does not suffer here the defeat 
which such presumption deserves." 

But the good bishop was greatly mistaken, as the result proved. The 
candidacy of Mr. Parnell for Cork was a surprise even to himself, and 



GENERAL ELECTION. 321 

•when a few of the electors of advanced Provincialist principles deter- 
mined that his name was the best they could fight Nicholas Dan with, they 
never dreamt of success. But Mr. Parnell did not fail them. He was 
then full of health and vigor, and believed his course would be success- 
ful, and his National supporters believed that when the hour of failure 
came by his course, he would adopt theirs and carry it out with the same 
energy and self-sacrifice with which he devoted himself to Parliamentary 
agitation. All men we met in Ireland during that election, who were 
patriotic, believed that in Charles Stewart Parnell Ireland had found 
another Theobald Wolfe Tone. And that the grandson of the man who 
captured two British ships in battle would emerge from the embryo stage 
of moral suasion into the patriot and soldier leader of his people, the 
Washington and Tell of Ireland. It was this belief that inspired the 
enthusiasm of his countrymen, and which never weakened, they had no 
occasion to doubt, until he was a prisoner in the hands of his foe. 

The night of the polling for Cork city, Mr. Parnell, addressing a 
crowded audience from the hotel window, said : 

" The battle is now over. I know the people of Cork have done all 
they could. I came here in a crisis to put out the Liberals, and if I have 
done that I am satisfied." 

Mr. Parnell did not think he would be elected, but that the Liberal, 
Nicholas Dan, would fall so far short of the requisite number of votes 
by Mr. Parnell's candidature, that Mr. Goulding, the Tory, would get 
elected. These were the tactics used by the Parnellites ; by all means 
defeat that canting, hypocritical party, the Liberals. Mr. John Daly, 
all Cork men conceded, would head the poll, a representative Cork Pro- 
vincialist, a city merchant, and a most popular man. 

How strange to-day to see Mr. Parnell in alliance with these same 
Liberals, so truly and deservedly despised by the men in the gap. 

The result of the Cork election was, to the surprise of all the people, 
the return of Mr. Parnell, who was next on the poll to John Daly. The 
Dublin city election was also a surprise. A Home Ruler, or a man who 
posed as such, was elected and the famous Dublin Six was broken by the 
rejection of their candidate. The writer remembers visiting Enniscorthy 
the morning the news came of Mr. Parnell's election for Cork, and also 
the news of the Dublin success. Outside of Nuzam's Hotel was stand- 
ing the gallant Chevalier O'Clery. The morning papers had not come 
up from the train, and he eagerly asked : " What news from Cork ? " 
" Parnell is elected," was the ready reply. He dropped his eyeglass and 
said mournfully : " Then I fear my chances here are very poor." The 
chevalier was right. Mr. Parnell's candidates won all along the line ; 
the popular and national enthusiam were all in his favor, and Ireland 
gave him every chance to be successful in his crusade of shame. 

Mr. Parnell, commenting on the Cork city election, said : " As com- 
paring Whig with Tory, I have no hesitation in saying that it would be 
a greater calamity for Cork and Ireland to put in a Whig than a Tory. 
(Cheers.) That is my deliberate conviction (cheers) ; I would rather see 
neither." 

Mr. Parnell declared war on the Whig section of the Home Rulers and 
their leader Mr. Shaw, and so he caused the nomination of Mr. Andrew 
Kettle, a County Dublin farmer, and then a prominent member of the Land 
League, in opposition to Colonel Colthurst in the County Cork. Colonel 
Colthurst was one of Mr. Shaw's followers, but it was generally be- 
lieved in Cork at that time that the real opposition was to Mr. Shaw 
himself. 

The Bishops in the large County of Cork and the Roman Catholic 
clergy were in direct opposition to Mr. Kettle, but in spite of their resist- 



3 22 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

ance, had Mr. Kettle been a Cork man he would have been successful ; 
unfortunately these local jealousies are not altogether swept away yet. 

An incident witnessed by the writer in Middleton, during the Kettle 
campaign, was of a rather dramatic nature. Accompanied by Mr. William 
Conyngham, now of New York, and a number of friends he visited 
Middleton. The R. C. clergy were determined to oppose the Par- 
nell party, but were unsuccessful. The people received the deputation 
from the city with great cheers and acclamation. The speaking was from 
the windows of the hotel, formerly known as Mahony's, now called Rear- 
don's Hotel ; among the speakers was a young man, a Mr. J. Hyde of Kil- 
leagh, who in speaking of landlordism thanked God he was no longer under 
its blighting influence. He was a hotel proprieter in Killeagh. He painted 
a graphic and powerful picture of the eviction of his parents when he was 
a small boy, and, said Mr. Hyde, continuing his speech, "in the opposite 
window sits the landlord who evicted us — Captain Smith Barry." 

Captain Barry, who with his daughter and a gentleman friend was 
seated at the opposite window looking at the crowd in the streets below, and 
listening through curiosity to the speeches, turned pale and drew back 
as Mr. Hyde pointed his ringer at him as the evictor and destroyer of his 
childhood's home. Had a bomb-shell fallen at Captain Smith Barry's 
feet he could not have been more thunderstruck than when this incident 
of many years gone by was cast in his face thus publicly before the 
people. Every eye in that thronged assemblage was upon him, and a low 
murmur and some groans followed Mr. Hyde's expose. The incident was 
much commented on. Some of the farmers present said that Captain 
Smith Barry had changed and late in life was what is called a good landlord. 

Mr. Parnell made a farewell speech from the Victoria Hotel to the 
immense surging crowd that filled Patrick Street to overflowing. What 
most particularly struck his hearers in his remarks was his fear that the 
coming to power of the Gladstonites might disrupt the Irish party, as 
their natural enemies, the Tories, were open and aboveboard in their 
hostility ; he seemed to fear the false and delusive promises of the Liberals 
and that of their great leader ; speaking on the subject he said : 

"The Irish party would have the Whigs to fight in the next Parliament, 
and it would depend entirely upon the earnestness and determination of 
the men composing it whether they should get sham Acts like Gladstone's 
Land Act of 1870." 

Mr. Parnell will get nothing from Mr. Gladstone but sham Acts. He 
has deceived the masses with the greatest sham he ever offered when he 
introduced a bill he called " Home Rule" in after time. 

The citizens of Cork were determined to pay their newly elected mem- 
ber what honors they could offer. So the Mayor and corporation on 
Thursday, May 15, conferred the freedom of the city on Mr. Parnell. 
This honor was voted to Mr. Parnell in recognition of his services to his 
countrymen. The last person to whom the freedom of the city was pre- 
sented was the late Mr. Butt, M. P. 

A large number of the general public witnessed the ceremony and on 
the arrival of Mr. Parnell, in company with the Mayor, great enthusiasm 
was evinced. 

The Mayor having presented the parchment containing the freedom 
of the city, Mr. Parnell, in returning thanks, said that all the gains that 
had ever been made in Ireland in the path of political freedom for the 
Irish people had been in the shape of restoration of ancient privileges, 
rather than advance beyond ancient lines. Referring to his visit to 
America he contrasted favorably the condition of the laboring classes in 
America with that of the laborers at home. He was much struck at the 
superior life of the working classes in America. The Mayor of Lynn, 



GENERAL ELECTION. 323 

had worked at his trade in a boot factory and he understood this in 
proof of the value of two of the great social features in America, viz., the 
free school system and the general democratic tendency of the country. 
Without wishing to introduce a republic into this country he would like 
to see every workingman in the country enjoy the same opportunity as 
the Mayor of Lynn, and in Parliament he would endeavor to use his best 
exertions to that end. 

Mr. Parnell spoke from Wilson's Hotel window that night to the 
multitude in the street. 

" I thank you, fellow-citizens, for the distinguished honor you have 
conferred upon me by electing me as your representative. You have 
joined with Meath and Mayo in returning me to the House of Commons, 
and I will exert myself in order to be worthy to fill the position which has 
been bestowed upon me. The responsibility of the present position for 
every Irish member is a great one ; the Irish party had been increased in 
numbers, but it had also been very much improved in quality. (Loud cheers 
and voices " They may thank you.") The members now returned to the 
House of Commons as the representatives of Ireland, are not to be com- 
pared with those who were sent to the constituencies at the last general 
election. (Cheers.) I should rather have said the late party was in no sense 
to be compared to the present one. (Cheers ; a voice — "We'll have no 
coercion now.") Ireland would now be represented by men of deter- 
mination, energy, and independence (cheers), with a sense of the respon- 
sibility which devolved upon them and determined to recompense the 
people of Ireland for the sacrifices which they had made in their behalf. 
(Cheers.) . . 

" So let not anybody be of faint heart or suppose that Ireland was not in 
a position pf great power. Ireland was in a position of really great power, 
and I believe that her sons, both in and out of Parliament, will use that 
power with full effect." 

The voice in the crowd, that interjected into Mr. Parnell's speech, 
spoke as truly as to fact as did the Irish leader. The man who said, 
■" We'll have no coercion now," spoke as wisely as he who said " Ireland's 
position was one of great power." Both speakers were sincere in believ- 
ing what they expressed. In the face of the cruel coercion which fol- 
lowed this Irish election, what a hollow mockery is Parliamentary agita- 
tion ! 

The returns of the County Cork election show that Mr. Kettle was 
defeated by a small number of votes. The numbers were, Shaw 5,354, 
Colthurst 3,584, Kettle 3,430. 

Mr. Parnell had received the unprecedented honor of being elected 
for three constituencies, Cork, Mayo, and Meath. A similar occurrence 
had never happened in Ireland before, neither had such a compliment 
been ever paid in Britain. There was some delay before he decided, 
and he wisely selected Cork as the constituency he would represent. He 
had no difficulty in getting two of his followers elected in both the con- 
stituencies he resigned. 

Mr. Parnell, so far as Ireland was concerned, was thoroughly master 
of the situation. He had routed all opposition, and was duly endorsed as 
Irish Parliamentary leader ; still the moderate section who succeeded in 
getting elected, by swallowing the most extreme (so called) Parliamentary 
pledges, had a preference for Mr. Shaw as leader. 

Mr. Parnell, in a letter to the Chicago Daily News, gives his views of 
the situation : 

' " I am exceedingly pleased with the results of the elections. Our 
party has gained nine seats from the Whigs and Tories, while a marked 
improvement has been effected in its personnel. The timid and insincere 



324 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

have been replaced by determined and zealous workers. We have car- 
ried Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, except one county. It is incor- 
rect to suppose that the Liberals are rendered independent of the Irish members. 
Their majority disappears should we join the Conservatives. Moreover, 
our party will scarcely cross to the ministerial side of the House of Com- 
mons, even though that side be occupied by Liberals instead of Conserva- 
tives. Our presence in the Opposition will be understood as a constant 
reminder of the slender nature of the tenure by which the Ministers hold 
their power. We expect that a good land bill will be introduced and 
passed immediately. 

" Should the Liberals refuse to accede to our just demands, they can be 
very promptly reduced to order by a determined stand on the part of our 
members. The present Irish party is an immense advance in every 
respect upon the previous representations, and sufficient men have been 
returned of a class that know what they want and are determined to have 
it rendered practically impossible that the most powerful Ministry can with- 
stand them." 

As showing the resolution of the people to abolish landlordism, the elec- 
tion of James O'Kelly, who defeated the O'Conor Don in Roscommon after 
sitting twenty years, is considered the most remarkable demonstration of 
the elections. 

Mr. Parnell to-day apparently believes in the same folly. How did he 
promptly reduce the Ministry to order. How or where did he display that 
power which he told us was so great that no Ministry could withstand 
them ? There are no prophecies needed ; the facts prove, what they must 
always prove, the complete defeat of the Irish Parliamentary party. How 
coolly Mr. Parnell tells us that the people had resolved to abolish land- 
lordism ; suppose they have resolved to have a star from the firmament 
for each of their birthdays, it would not be more absurd than this state- 
ment. If resolving had such magic power, why not pass a resolution 
that there shall be no more famines, and that all and each shall for the 
future become rich and suffer no more poverty. When will this delusion 
pass from the Irish people ? 

Mr. William Shaw, who still occupied the position of leader of the 
Parliamentary party, sent round a circular convening a meeting of the 
party for April 27. Mr. Parnell sent a letter in reply to Mr. Shaw 
declining to attend, giving as his reasons that at the date proposed they 
would be ignorant of the composition of the new Ministry and its pro- 
gramme relating to Ireland. The Freeman s Journal, after Mr. Parnell 
and other members declining to attend the proposed conference, thought 
that under the circumstances the proposition had better be abandoned. 
" Mr. Shaw will have done his duty, and responsibility for failure will fall 
on other shoulders." 

The general election of 1880 was as disastrous to the Tories as that 
of 1874 had been to their opponents, so Lord Beaconsfield was compelled 
to surrender the keys of office. The Queen sent for the Marquis of 
Hartington to form a new Ministry, as he was the official leader of the 
Liberal party. But the country, i. e., Britain, had evidently called for Mr. 
W. E. Gladstone, and so the Marquis recommended Her Majesty to send 
for him. She did so and in a short time a Liberal Ministry was formed, 
and that class of the Irish people who take interest in such changes were 
delighted at the composition of the new Government. First there was the 
grandest of grand old men at its head ; next there were two of Ireland's 
most devoted friends, members of the New Cabinet, the great Tribune 
of the people, John Bright, and the great Birmingham democrat, the 
radical of radicals, Joseph Chamberlain, and as if to complete their happi- 



GENERAL ELECTION. 3 2 5 

ness and delight and to consummate the glory of Ireland's great future 
instead of the sneering bitter enemy to Ireland that had been Tory 
Chief Secretary, that sarcastically callous foe Jemmy Lowther, a great 
statesman was coming instead, a man who had traveled Ireland in '48 to 
relieve her suffering children, the benevolent and kindly William E. 
Forster, one of England's foremost Liberals. Irishmen well remember the 
Hosannas offered up by the popular newspapers at this great appoint- 
ment. The sunshine of Liberality was about to shed the luminous rays 
of freedom in suffering Erin, several of the so-called National journals 
in Ireland said. 

The long delayed Home Rule conference of the Irish party was held 
in Dublin, and Mr. Parnell was elected chairman of the patty. Mr. E. 
Dwyer Gray proposed Mr. Wm. Shaw for chairman. The O'Gorman 
Mahon proposed the election of Mr. Parnell. By a vote of 23 to 18 Mr. 
Parnell was appointed. Mr. Richard Power proposed that the Home 
Rulers should hold aloof from all English political parties and sit on the 
opposition benches. It was decided to postpone decision until the fol- 
lowing Thursday in London. 

Mr. Parnell was now elected to supreme control of the Parliamentary 
party, as he had hitherto been leader in the country. He had overcome 
his domestic enemies by the magic of success. The Irish newspapers 
and the great American organ hitherto so hostile had begun to change, 
and in a short time all were sailing in the general current of praise and 
support which Irishmen all the world over had offered to the young and 
energetic Charles Stewart Parnell. 

William Ewart Gladstone, the giant statesman of Britain, who made 
so many professions of liberal principles throughout the country during 
the election, was now England's Premier. He spoke especially kindly of 
Ireland, and said that the land question should be settled, and "Ireland 
should be governed according" to Irish ideas." The writer remembers a 
friend calling his attention to some friendly remarks of Ireland made by 
Mr. Gladstone, and all the good things he promised to do for her, as the 
silver stream of oratory flowed from his tongue, addressing a crowded 
multitude of sympathizers in Prince's Street, Edinburgh. Those who- 
were skeptical that these promises would be realized were called cynics 
and unbelievers by their Irish countrymen, who were steeped to the lips 
in Provincialism, and who could not understand a man professing 
patriotism who refused to gush forth in enthusiasm at the bright prospects 
before his country. 

The Grand Old Man was now in power to make good these promises,, 
and also that harbinger of hope for Ireland who was to crown her with 
many worldly blessings, Mr. Wm. E. Forster, was now Chief Secretary, 
and with the generous Liberal Cabinet, according to those influential 
Provincial organs, the Dublin Nation and Freeman, Ireland had much to 
hope for. Their enemies, the Tories, were routed and out of power, 
(Ireland is looking for another such victory at this time of writing — 1887 — 
to repeat the lesson of 1880, further and more violent coercion) ; and last 
of all, Mr. Parnell has informed us of the great power of the Irish party, 
and how they could command and control Ministers. Verily the crusade 
of shame has nearly been successful. If it can be crowned with victory, 
this is the hour. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

(18S0-18S1.) 

THE " GRAND OLD MAN " IN POWER — OUTRAGE MANUFACTURE. 

The Dismembered Empire — Change of Government — Ireland under Gladstone — The 
Queen's SfJeech — No Land Bill — O'Connor Power's Amendment — Its Defeat — No 
Change toward Ireland — The Disturbance Bill — Its Withdrawal — Government 
Measure — Bill Sent up to the Lords — Great Gathering of Peers — The House of 
Lords — As a Final Court of Appeals — Earl of Beaconsfield's Speech against the 
Government Bill — Defeat of the Government in the Lords — Consternation in the 
Country — British Opposition Appeased — The Lords and Home Rule — Removal of 
the House of Peers — Only Possible by Revolution — Government will not Re-intro- 
duce the Bill — Firmness for Ireland — Irish Press on the Defeat — Mr. Parnell's Great (?) 
Party — Relegated to the Regions of Impotency — Disturbances among the Irish Farmers 
— Outrage Manufacture- — Public Meetings — Mr. James Redpath — Abolition and Ire- 
land — Absurd Canards in the British Press — British Hatred of America — First Year 
of the Gladstone Administration. 

The great Liberal party had now the destinies of Britain and her 
Crown colonies in its power, but not that of the empire ; for no British 
Ministry governs the empire in its entirety. 

It made not the slightest difference to the Government of the Cana- 
dian Dominion which way a British general election was decided or 
whether Mr. Gladstone or Lord Beaconsfield came to power. The tie 
between Canada and the mother country is purely a theoretical one ; it 
no more affected British North America than would a change of govern- 
ment in France or Germany, for any diplomatic arrangements necessary 
for the negotation of treaties would be equally carried out by one or other 
of the great British parties. Whatever Canada wished in these nego- 
tiations Britain would be compelled to yield, her authority in the business 
•being a mere diplomatic fiction. 

The same can be said of the Australian Governments — New South 
Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia — and the African 
Governments of the Cape of Good Hope and Natal. When British 
Ministers speak of their great empire they include a large portion which 
has gone from beneath their control. 

It is not so in Ireland ; there, though she is a distinct and different 
nation, the English Premier holds despotic sway, although Ireland is said 
to have a share of the British Constitution. Hence the great rejoicings 
which the Irish people who believe in a peaceful solution of their ills gave 
forth when they learned that the good Mr. Gladstone had defeated his 
Tory opponent and their persecutor, and the Liberal Premier had assumed 
the reins of power. The joy evinced by Irishmen of a certain numerous 
and highly respectable and wealthy class, when the " Grand Old Man " 
became England's Prime Minister in the early summer of 1880, was great 
and enthusiastic ; it caused much delight to these Provincialists as his 
restoration to power would again evoke in this year of grace 1887, with 
the selfsame results. 

After the usual preliminaries necessary on a change of Government, 
and the election of a new Parliament, swearing in of members and re- 
election of Ministers, the new House of Commons met to transact busi- 
ness on Thursday, May 20, 1880. Ministers usually and indeed invari- 

326 



THE "GRAND OLD MAN" IN POWER. 327 

ably foreshadow in the Queen's speech what measures they propose 
introducing during the session. The Irish members were both 
grieved and disappointed that the allusions to Ireland were of a 
vague and illusory nature ; no definite measure was mentioned in the 
Queen's speech, for their country. Ireland, as the world knew, had gone 
through a fearful winter of destitution, numbers of people had died of 
hunger, and that this death roll of starvation had not amounted to thou- 
sands was entirely due to the benevolence of other countries, and more 
especially to the warm-hearted, generous people of America. Australia 
came next in her charitable contributions. That something was wrong in 
the Government of Ireland the most skeptical and bitter of her foes were 
compelled to admit. A Liberal Ministry with a large majority had been 
newly elected to power, overflowing with promises to Ireland ; composed 
of the most democratic statesmen in England and under the leadership 
of the greatest statesman of the age, whose name was then and is still 
(such is the credulity of mankind) synonymous with all the virtues and 
benevolence that fill the human heart. And yet this great Minister and 
his no less great Liberal Cabinet completely ignored suffering Ireland 
almost at his door, vainly trying to hide her wounds and misery. 

The Irish party determined to challenge the new Ministry for their 
neglect, so Mr. O'Connor Power brought in a motion as an amendment 
to the Commons' address in reply to her Majesty's gracious speech. He 
moved as an amendment to the address that the present occupiers of the 
land in Ireland deserve immediate attention in order that their legiti- 
mate claims may be satisfied. 

This motion was debated in the House in the usual temper and tone 
used by Britons when discussing that nauseous subject, Irish troubles. 
The " Grand Old Man " and the Liberal Cabinet were overflowing with 
the milk of human kindness toward the Irish members and their country. 
They washed their hands with invisible soap in expressing their good 
wishes and what they were to do for Ireland, and give to her when 
convenient, but not just at that time ; for the present they were inexorable. 
Mr. O'Connor Power's motion was put to the vote ; the result of the 
division was forty-seven Irish votes for, and three hundred British votes 
against; thus the amendment was defeated. 

A facsimile of one of Mr. Butt's divisions during the previous Govern- 
ment. Where was Mr. Parnell's determination to make the Ministry 
succumb? that ministry which could not " withstand" the Irish party? 
— the words used by the Irish leader in his letter to the Chicago Daily 
News. 

The Irish party held a meeting and decided on bringing in several 
measures ; the most important because the most urgent of these was a bill 
that would put a temporary stop to evictions, particularly for the coming 
winter. This measure was intrusted to Mr. O'Connor Power. 

The bill introduced by that gentleman was entitled Compensation for 
Disturbance Bill. It was an amendment of Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of 
1870, by making ejectment for non-payment of rent an act of disturbance 
on the part of the landlord whereby the evicted tenant could claim com- 
pensation. With the view of stopping capricious evictions, the Land Act 
of 1870 compelled the landlord to pay a money compensation, as it was 
considered only just to the tenant, he having an interest in the improve- 
ment of the farm. It has been said that the landlords by increasing the 
rent evaded this clause, thereby forcing up the tenants' payments to an 
impossible sum, then the landlords could step in and evict for non-pay- 
ment. In the event of the landlord evicting, by Mr. O'Connor Power's 
bill he would have the power to pay himself out of this compensation 
for all arrears due. 



328 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Mr. O'Connor Power, in a letter to the London Times, thus describes 
his Bill : 

" By the Land act of 1870 capricious eviction entitles the tenant to com- 
pensation for disturbance. While the provision securing the right to the 
tenant has a beneficial effect in many instances, the cases are not rare in 
which it has the effect of inducing the landlord to force up the rent to a 
point where payment becomes impossible. The tenant is then ejected 
for non-payment of rent,- and his right to compensation is destroyed. In 
this way a tenant who is in arrear for one year may be deprived of his 
farm without any compensation for the loss of the right of occupancy, 
equivalent to several years' purchase. 

" Under my bill the arrears due would be deducted in every case from 
the amount of compensation, and the landlord would suffer no injustice 
whatever." 

Mr. Parnell moved as an amendment to the Government Relief Bill to 
suspend for two years all proceedings for ejectments, in all holdings at 
and under twenty pounds yearly. This amendment, if accepted, would 
include the great majority of the Irish farming community. But neither 
Mr. O'Connor Power's bill nor Mr. Parnell's amendment would be 
accepted by the great Liberal leader, who it was said should be compelled 
to succumb to the Irish party. 

Mr. Forster introduced a bill in lieu of Mr. O'Connor Power's measure, 
a mild copy of the Leaguers' bill, which affected a portion of sixteen 
counties out of the thirty-two ; this bill passed the Commons and was 
sent up to the Lords. 

The House of Lords and all the Conservative party held that this 
measure was a gross violation of the rights of property ; they considered 
the landlord owned his land just as he owns his horse or his hat or 
coat. This doctrine is monstrous ; private property in land can only be 
subject to the exigencies of the people of the country ; that a man can 
own land as he does any of his chattels or his garments would be an outrage 
on humanity. But the self-satisfied peers of Britain did not hold such 
views. To give the recently elected Liberal House of Commons a crush- 
ing defeat every absent peer was summoned back to London. They came 
from fishing in Norway, from hunting and shooting in India, from the 
Orient and the Occident, from yachting tours, and all the various pleasures 
which these wealthy men indulge their fancy in. All hurried back to 
vote on the second reading of Mr. Gladstone's Compensation for Dis- 
turbance Bill. 

The House of Lords has in its ranks some few brilliant and able men, 
but they are nearly all new blood sent into that House for political or 
military services. The legal additions to that House, which in all cases 
come up from the Commons, have been represented by very able and pro- 
found scholars and lawyers. But the great majority of the peers know 
more about horse flesh, yachting, billiards, and various other pleasures 
than they know of legislation. The abuses permitted to remain open to 
these sporting, idle peers seems a strange satire on the civilization of this 
later part of the nineteenth century. 

In that most important of all tribunals which society has endeavored 
to keep pure, unsullied, and beyond the reach of doubt, are the courts of 
justice; and this last and supreme court, the final court of appeal, should 
be, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion. In the British kingdom the 
supreme and final court is the House of Lords. All appeals from the 
courts below are heard by the law lords only ; these are men who have 
spent their lives in the legal profession, many of them ex-Lord Chancel- 



THE "GRAND OLD MAN" IN POWER. 329 

lors. In the hearing of a suit the appellants are represented by counsel, 
as in the law courts ; each of these law peers delivers his judgment, usually 
a written statement, concluding with the Lord Chancellor, who presides ; 
when the decision of the court, sitting as a judiciary, has been reached, 
the Lord Chancellor moves up the chamber followed by the law lords. 
He takes his seat upon the woolsack, and then the House of Peers is in 
session, when he puts the case already decided to the vote of the House, and 
it votes " content " or " not content " as in ordinary motions or bills before 
the Chamber. It is within the power of the other members of this House 
to now vote upon this legal issue, of which they know nothing. A number 
of sporting peers could, if so disposed, alter the judgment of the law lords 
by voting with the minority and upset the decision already arrived at; 
which reversal of judgment could not be repealed without a special Act of 
Parliament. 

It is true that such an instance has never happened ; social habits and 
etiquette have stopped any such serious prank so far. But it remains 
open to half a dozen peers to carry out a sporting wager, or for any pur- 
pose, to change the decision on a lawsuit which has been argued out 
before the highest learned luminaries at the British bar. 

Before this august House of Lords, as a co-ordinate branch of the 
British legislature, came Mr. Gladstone's Irish Bill. The peers assem- 
bled in great force to vote on the second reading. Never within the present 
century did any measure from the lower House bring together such a 
gathering as assembled at St. Stephen's, Westminster, on the evening of 
Tuesday, August 3, 1880. 

The few other good speakers who belonged to that coroneted assembly 
had delivered their views on this bill when the Earl of Beaconsfield, K. G., 
rose to address the House. The ex-Premier was one of the most charming 
speakers it has ever been our good fortune to hear. When he was trans- 
ferred from the House of Commons to that of the peers, every member, 
no matter what were his political views, regretted the loss of Mr. Disraeli, 
who had so often charmed a dull debate with the flashes of his peculiar 
humor and the brilliancy of his natural genius. He made a powerful 
and telling speech in defense of the opinions of his order and in con- 
demnation of what he considered the dangerous principles involved in the 
bill. In concluding he said : 

" There is at the present day a great tendency to believe that it is 
impossible to resist the progress of a new idea. . . 

" The despotism of public opinion is in everybody's mouth. But I 
should like to know, when we are called upon to bow to this public opinion, 
who will define public opinion. Any human conclusion that is arrived 
at with adequate knowledge and with sufficient thought is entitled to 
respect. . . 

"But what we call public opinion is generally public sentiment. We 
who live in this busy age, and in this busy country, know very well how 
few there are who can obtain even the knowledge necessary for the com- 
prehension of great political subjects and how much fewer there are who, 
having obtained the knowledge, can supply the thought which would mature 
it into opinion. No, my lords, it is public sentiment, not public opinion ; 
and frequently it is public passion (hear, hear). My lords, you are now called 
upon to legislate in a heedless spirit by false representation of what is called 
the public mind. This bill is only the first in a series the results of which 
will be to change the character of this country, and of the Constitution 
of this country (hear). The argument that you cannot stop upon this 
ground urged by my noble and learned friend has never been answered. 
If you intend to stop upon it, you were not justified in making this proposi- 
tion. The proposition is one I think most dangerous to the country, and 



33° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

I trust your lordships will this night reject it. If you do that, you will do 
a deed for which your country will be grateful and of which your pos- 
terity will be proud." 

The house soon after divided on the second reading of the bill with 
these results : Contents 51, Non-Contents 282. 

Majority against the second reading of the bill, 231. This was a most 
unprecedented event in British history. A new Government, freshly 
elected and with such a large majority as that which the Liberals held, 
defeated in the Lords on the first important Government measure sent up 
to that House ! But what made this vote more significant and of much 
greater importance was the extraordinarily large attendance of peers and 
the immense majority by which the Government bill was defeated. What 
swelled the numbers of that majority was the defection of the Liberal 
peers who voted in the opposition. Sixty-three of these so-called Liberal 
noblemen followed Lord Beaconsfield into the division lobby, a greater 
number than those who voted with their party. This measure, which was 
of no moment to the British people, now assumed importance. The 
Government they had so recently elected to power was defeated in one of 
its measures by the reactionary Upper Chamber. 

Has it ever occurred to the Irish Provincialists, who are so sanguine 
about getting Home Rule by what they call " peaceful and Constitutional 
means," that even if the British Commons passed such a bill, that it 
would be rejected by an overwhelmning majority of the members of this 
old and antiquated House of Peers ? 

The Minister who would try to get a bill containing anything 
approaching Irish self-government through the House of Lords, unless so 
mutilated that it could confer no substantial advantages on Ireland, might 
as well try to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. The House of 
peers should be first destroyed as a co-ordinate branch of the legislature 
before a genuine measure of Irish self-government could become law in 
Britain. This removal of the peers from power could only be accomplished 
by physical revolution. While the Upper Chamber retains its power it will 
never permit such a measure of concession to Ireland to pass its portals, 
unless Irish national troops are in the field battling against their country's 
invader, or a foreign war exists of magnitude sufficient to threaten invasion. 
In such a crisis it is very probable Ireland would reject all attempts at 
compromise, as the blessed sun of independence would be dawning on the 
horizon. 

There was a good deal of indignation expressed by the British 
Radicals, but as it was an Irish question on which the peers defeated the 
Government the animus soon died out. 

People who have resided in Britain have often heard Englishmen in 
debates denounce the House of Lords ; but there is no constitutional 
way of removing this House or of curtailing its privileges, unless the 
Upper Chamber itself sanctions those measures. It is very probable that 
some reforms will be introduced into that august assembly, owing to 
several recent scandals, but these reforms will not reduce by any means 
its power as an institution in the British kingdom. It will still remain a 
powerfully armed bastion to bar the way to Irish national demands. 
There is no way short of English revolution — which is not likely to occur — 
by which the Upper House can be removed from the curriculum of the 
British law-making powers and set aside for an elective chamber. 

The Irish press and public were of course indignant and alarmed at 
the action of the Lords. The Dublin Freeman 's Journal said : 

"The interest in the debate is swallowed up in the vote, which we 
regard as one of the most momentous events of our time, because for the 
first time in our recent annals the House of Lords has set at defiance a 



THE "GRAND OLD MAN" IN POWER. 331 

solemn vote of the House of Commons on a Ministerial measure of the 
first magnitude. Any courage that was in this conduct was dimmed by 
the base and utter selfishness which dictated it. We regard the vote not 
only as a great blunder, but an unmitigated calamity. It will deepen the 
intense feeling that from the Parliament of England no relief is to be 
expected, it will embitter the relations between landlord and tenant in 
Ireland, already sufficiently acute in their hostility. It will deepen the 
misery, the confusion, and the despair of the unhappy West, and in a word 
it would be difficult to find an act of a legislative body more wicked and 
more insane. For the Irish people and for the Queen's Government 
there are most serious questions raised by the vote of this morning. 
Both the nation and the Ministry have received a slap in the face from a 
landlord combination, prostituting to its own ends its Parliamentary 
powers. The Irish nation must promptly determine what its attitude will 
be; so also must her Majesty's Ministers; and it is a sad calamity for 
liberty and for Ireland that at such a crisis Achilles tosses in the bed of 
pain, and there is no man who can bend his bow." 

■ The Dublin Freeman had Achilles (*. <?., Mr. Gladstone) soon after 
restored to health, and for Ireland and for the liberty of that country 
Achilles bent his bow with no uncertain aim. As to the Irish nation 
promptly determining its course, the great majority of the Irish nation 
had mapped out that course, which was to do nothing but protest and 
vow the usual vows of vengeance, which has no meaning but that frothy 
nationality which Ireland's enemies despise. As to the British Ministers, 
they quickly made up their minds, and that was to take the rebuff 
administered to them by the Lords. After all it was only a mere Irish 
question of no interest to Britain, and only of importance to a race of 
people who are shouting for their liberty, and who would condemn as 
wicked and denounce as criminal any Irishman who would suggest prac- 
tical measures. They humbly appeal to the British law-making power, 
and what right have they to complain if their petitions are hurled in 
their faces? 

The Government was questioned by Mr. Parnell as to what course 
they intended to pursue in this emergency. Mr. Forster,' speaking on 
behalf of himself and colleagues, said : "I deeply regret the rejection 
of the Compensation Bill. I do not think we can bring in another bill 
on that subject this session. The Government will protect the laws and 
the courts in the execution of the laws. I hope a plentiful harvest will 
alleviate the suffering of the farmers. The members of all parties of 
both Houses should use their influence in maintaining and assisting the 
Government to maintain order in Ireland." 

Where now was Mr. Parnell's great party ? Where was the increase 
of numbers and quality of his following ? Where such follies must ever 
be, relegated to the hopeless regions of impotency. The old Irish Whigs, 
whom Mr. Parnell was so elated at defeating, might as well have been 
sitting in that House for any service Mr. Parnell's extremists could do 
for Ireland. And understand, this was the Government and the Parlia- 
ment of the " grandest of grand old men." 

Excitement sprang up in the country ; the unfortunate Irish farmer and 
laborer had struggled through a winter of famine with the aid of 
public alms, having their hopes raised by this successful (?) Irish election 
and the promises of their great leader, Mr. Parnell. With the eloquent 
speeches of their patriotic members still ringing in their ears, every 
cheer that they gave in response was in their fancv a removal of the 
shadow that darkened their lives — landlordism. There was the great 
Parnell powerless before the British Parliament and another winter of 
hunger to face. What wonder if many of the people grew desperate, 



332 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and in their desperation turned their physical force on some unfortunate 
tenant farmer or country shopkeeper, who violated their code of laws ? 
They knew no better. Their leaders counseled peace, but it was hard to 
practice ; and some unfortunate wretch who, yielding to temptation, took 
a vacant farm or did some one of the many things against their combina- 
tions, suffered ; and so sprung up these outrages which the British press 
magnified a thousand fold. Nationalists pity and deplore this state of 
things in their unhappy country, and whatever outrages actually did take 
place were the direct results of British rule and its inherent infamy. 
Irish Nationalists yield to no ".moral suasionist " in deploring this fac- 
tional use of physical force in these wanton attacks which men made 
on each other. They wish their countrymen to strike the foe, and never 
cease striking, were there even the impossible number of one thousand 
hanged weekly ; which is their loss by the present policy of remaining 
peaceful and idle. It is a sacred war, more holy even than the Crusades. 
But these country outrages are not striking the foe ; they cannot affect 
British power, and only tend to make the Irish name further degraded. 
Strange results of the doctrine of shame, men who would not strike down 
the head and front of this foreign infamy miscalled Government, yet 
raised their hands against each other ! These poor people saw in these 
selfish acts of the men they attacked the highest treason to their cause, 
and in their sufferings and agony did not know what they did. 

Public meetings were held and the usual resolutions passed, and the 
same hollow farce repeated by men of education, but who apparently are 
either insane in this delusion of shaming England or else cannot in any 
manner be capable of realizing that this question of Ireland is an inter- 
national issue, impossible to solve without either physical or moral 
force. One great meeting was held at Leenane near Kylemore, Co. 
Galway, at which the great abolitionist Mr. James Redpath spoke. Irish 
Nationalists will wonder if it has ever occurred to their worthy friend 
that the Irish question was not one open to the ballot box, like that of 
slavery ; and yet even here, in this great free nation, this sectional issue 
could not be solved without an appeal to arms. These meetings were 
generally summoned by such notices as this: "Assemble in your thou- 
sands and drive away the ravening wolf ! " What a strange race the people 
are made through foreign rule and domestic folly called agitation ! By 
assembling in their thousands and listening to eloquent speeches and 
cheering these speeches, in their " thousands," Irishmen were to drive 
away the ravening wolves (*. e., the landlords) ! 

The English papers at this time commenced the manufacture of all 
sorts of ridiculous, were they not tragic, sensation stories. Every day some 
fresh canard was published, something more ridiculously absurd than its 
fellow. Reported risings in the West of Ireland woke up the citizens of 
London one morning, to be followed by the next day's report of the cap- 
ture of a Fenian schooner in Limerick filled with arms ; next came the 
great sensation story — capture of a ship filled with arms by the Cork 
Fenians and removal of them to a secure hiding-place. " Great bloodshed 
expected in Ireland soon ! " Such was the continued strain of the London 
and English provincial press. Timid people who had business in Ireland 
were afraid to venture into a country in such a state of savagery. The 
writer remembers, on his return from Ireland, at the close of 1880, being 
asked very curious questions as to the condition of Ireland. A humorist 
who wished to draw upon his imagination, would find English people 
credulous enough to believe the most absurd Munchausen stories that 
could be invented. 

According to the papers, sinister looking men, persons having an 
American air and bearing, were to be seen in every town in Ireland. And 



THE "GRAND OLD MAN" IN POWER. $3$ 

also the public was informed that America was supplying arms and 
money to Fenians and Communists to perpetrate sanguinary deeds in 
Ireland. 

Americans will not readily understand the animus existing against 
them among the British masses ; not against the Irish-American alone, but 
all Americans. They dislike the American flag, American institutions, 
and American people. Official courtesies and some few kindly British 
exceptions may mislead the American people. 

The outrage manufacturers had done the work intended ; the public 
mind in Britain grew alarmed, and the public press was filled daily with 
columns of Irish outrages. The majority of cases were pure fiction without 
the slightest foundation in fact. The English workingman was incensed 
and in a most bitter mood against everything Irish ; as to the Radicals, who 
appeared friendly before the elections, their difference in tone now became 
marked. The leading speakers, several of them old Chartists, were unre- 
lenting in their denunciation of Irishmen. These were men who had 
been in the ranks of English democracy all their lives ; they spoke of the 
inferiority of the Irishman as a wage earner. These observations, repeated 
in the writer's presence hundreds of times by men of different mechanical 
trades, revealed the prejudice and hatred that were deeply rooted in their 
natures. And when men talk glibly of the English democracy sympathiz- 
ing with Ireland, they either speak upon a subject they know nothing 
about or else they willfully deceive to create a false hope. Permanent 
friendship between these hostile peoples can only be accomplished when 
they live under separate and distinct governments, as the Italians and 
Austrians of to-day. Their present attitude is but a repetition of the 
hostility they feel toward the Tories, which does not mean they will 
peacefully yield to Irish demands. Even in this, the largest section have 
gone against their idol Gladstone, or else Ireland would not at this date 
have a Tory government. Mr. Balfour was sent by John Bull on his 
present mission, and when United Ireland prints cartoons illustrating 
the angry Mr. Bull whipping his own officials, it must think it is address- 
ing a nation of fools if Irishmen can believe such silly statements. 

Thus closed the first year of the " Grand Old Man's " administration, he 
who is now the chosen leader of the Irish people. Alas ! for the credulity 
of the warm-hearted Irish ! 



CHAPTER XXV. 

(1S80-1SS1.) 

OBSTRUCTION'S WATERLOO — ROUT OF THE IRISH PARTY. 

Trophy of Victory, a New Word — Captain Boycott — His Guard — Emergency Movement 
— Mr. Gladstone's Yachting Tour — His Reception at Kingstown — The Soggarth Aroon 
— Prosecution of Mr. Parnell and the Leaguers — Great Trial in the Four Courts — Jury 
Disagree — Irish Barrister — Patriot and Prosecutor — Mr. Peter O'Brien, Q. C. — Mr. 
John Curran — Lord Mountmorris Killed — True Cause of his Death — Opening of 
Parliament, 1881 — Mr. Joseph Chamberlain — Mr. John Bright — Coercion for Ireland 
— The Grand Old Man's Bill Opposed by the Irish Members— Great Battle of Ob- 
struction — Irish Hold the Fort of Talk — Ministerial Relays — Irish Endurance — 
Achilles' Veterans — The Parnellite Artillery — Shells Charged with Adjectives — Irish 
Hector's Gallant Struggle — The Second Day's Fight — The Second Night of Obstruc- 
tion — House Still Sitting — A. M. Sullivan and Mr. Gladstone — Tim Healy to the 
Front with more Shells — A. M. Sullivan's Hand Grenades — Obstruction's Waterloo 
— Arrival of the Prussians — The Speaker's Coup D'Etat — The Debate Stopped — 
Supreme British Victory — The Old Guard Dies but Never Surrenders — Striking 
Picture in the House — Violation of British Law by the Speaker — Grand Tableau — 
Irish Members with Hands Uplifted — " Privilege ! Privilege !" — Obstruction Goes 
to Pieces — ''What next, Gallant Hector?" — Arrest of Davitt — Ticket of Leave 
Revoked — Mr. Parnell Questions the Home Secretary — Frantic Liberal Cheers at the 
Arrest of Davitt — Scene in The House — Suspension of Irish Members — Mr. Glad- 
stone's Complete Victory — Mr. Gladstone Introduces Closure — Waiting — Mr. Par- 
nell's Public Decision — His Manifesto — Agitate — No Wolfe Tone Yet — Mr. Parnell's 
Advice to the Farmers — Pay no Unjust Rents — Appeal to Victor Hugo — Great Meet- 
ing in Dublin — Mr. Patrick Egan Denounces the Home Rulers — Protesting Against 
Davitt's Arrest — Noble Attitude — " No Disorder or Crime " — Ireland Prostrated — 
Change. 

One of the results won by the Irish agitation was the creation of 
a new word, which the crusade of shame gave to the English, French, 
German, and Russian languages ; this new word was Boycott. Before 
the foundation of the League this weapon of social ostracism was called 
by various names, none nearly so expressive. In the British army it had 
been termed, when applied to an officer unpopular with his comrades, 
" round robin." It was however left to the Irish League to make this 
kind of offensive and defensive warfare more general ; and an inter- 
national verb was the outcome. This addition to the vocabulary was 
one undeniable victory of the agrarian struggle. 

Captain Boycott was an English gentleman, who took to farming as 
men take to different pursuits in life. He purchased some land at Lough 
Mask, near Ballinrobe, in the West of Ireland ; he began his career as 
farmer and small landlord some thirty years before Mr. Parnell made his 
first appearance on the stormy sea of Irish politics. Being a thrifty, in- 
dustrious man, he believed in buying in the cheapest market and selling 
his wares to the best advantage, and as he increased in worldly wealth he 
gained for himself the unpopular reputation of being very penurious, or, 
as the Irish peasants would say, a very near man. He became agent for 
one or two estates, so that his everyday life brought him in constant con- 
tact with the agricultural community of his locality, and feeling neces- 
sitated from a pure business standpoint to eject some poor tenants, who 
could not meet his so-called legal demands for rent, owing to the fact 
that the land they tilled was not able during the bad seasons to pro- 

334 



OBSTRUCTION'S WATERLOO. 335 

duce anything like the sum so taxed upon them, the Englishman be- 
came very naturally unpopular. Captain Boycott's title to his land was 
the amount he paid for it, but in equity he had no more legal title than 
the man who purchases goods from a receiver of stolen property ; no 
doubt the captain did not so look upon the transaction, hence his indig- 
nation when applied to by the tenants for a reduction of rent. Upon this 
steady, matter-of-fact, pounds, shilling, and pence gentleman, the local 
Land League commenced its first attempt to put in force its weapon of 
social ostracism. No one would sell him anything, he could get no 
one to work for him, and in short he was as completely isolated from 
the people he lived among as Robinson Crusoe on his desert isle was 
from the inhabitants of that part of the world he had left. 

The landlords, finding themselves face to face with this new and pecu- 
liar weapon of the league, formed an antagonistic organization, which 
they entitled the " Emergency movement." To procure recruits for this 
they had to go to the lowest social scale of the people, not in respect to caste, 
but conduct. The respectable well to do or fairly well to do Orangemen 
might fight their battle in the excitement of a scrimmage, possibly not 
understanding or caring for the merits of the question in dispute ; but to 
work on his farm or to do menial labor, the captain was compelled to hire 
a number of " ne'er do weels," outcasts of society from every grade. 
To procure food he was compelled to victual his house like a 
besieged garrison, and fearing his outcasts might be frightened away 
from their work by the fiery young Irish laborers, who looked upon Cap- 
tain Boycott and his surroundings as their most bitter foe, he was 
compelled to apply to the British authorities for protection, so a company 
of soldiers was sent to do garrison duty at Lough Mask, the home of 
the gallant captain. The military, unused to duties of this kind and not 
drawn from the elite of the British people, looked upon their quarters with 
the captain as a free and easy sort of existence ; they were not too partic- 
ular as to what they consumed in the way of edibles and drinkables, so 
that the captain found his last state of existence considerably worse than 
his first, and he might well exclaim, " Save me from my friends ! " He was 
indeed boycotted, hence the word. 

The worthy J. P. wrote to Mr. Gladstone, demanding ^£6ooo from 
the Premier, which he had lost upon his farm, but the English Prime 
Minister could not see this in the same light as Mr. Boycott, so he 
politely declined, but offered him additional protection if necessary, 
which was in the eyes of the captain an additional burden. He made 
a virtue of necessity and sold out what he could dispose of and came to 
the United States, where he did not get the sympathy he thought he 
deserved. He returned to Ireland, made friends with the people, and 
is now an agent on an English estate. The captain is at last happy. 
His name has become part of the language. 

The Government that could not, according to Mr. Parnell's letter to 
Chicago, "withstand" his legions, began to set about doing something 
to show their British friends they were alive to the situation. Mr. Glad- 
stone had recovered from his illness, and during his convalescence went 
on a yachting tour. On his trip he visited Ireland, landing at Kingstown 
near Dublin, where the British visitor was met with marks of respect and 
esteem by the few well to do promenaders who happened to be on the 
pier when he landed from his friend's yacht. In the small group who 
greeted Mr. Gladstone was a Roman Catholic clergyman. This gentle- 
man, full of that gush and effervescence which belong to some men of 
all nationalities, rushed forward and seized the visitor's hand, and going- 
down on his knees before the " Grand Old Man," raised Mr. Gladstone's 
hand to his lips, and with tears of joy streaming from his eyes, prayed 



3$6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

fervently that blessings would be showered upon the " Savior of 
Ireland." The " Savior of Ireland " was deeply moved, and no doubt 
grateful to the Soggarth aroon who, in his exuberance, probably thought 
that the Irish nation should be joyful at the illustrious visitor's presence, 
and express that delight by singing : 

Though dark are our sorrows, to-day we'll forget them, etc. 

Some unappreciative Irish journalist wrote verses of a humorous 
nature describing the scene, and published them in one of the National 
magazines, satirizing the Soggarth aroon. Notwithstanding, Mr. Glad- 
stone waxed stronger daily. Some attributed his rapid recovery to his 
Irish visit and the Soggarth 's blessing. 

The first use Mr. Gladstone made of his recovered strength was to 
order prosecutions to be issued against Mr. Parnell and his confreres, 
for disturbing and making muddy the stream out of which the landlord 
wolf wished to drink. "Achilles " could now bend his bow, so he tried 
a few shafts at the Irish League leaders. 

At length the great day of trial arrived, and Dublin city beheld a 
procession of patriots walking down the quays and approaching the 
Four Courts buildings, where Britain dispensed her laws for the benefit 
of her Irish serfs. The cheering of the crowds that followed these good 
gentlemen was very enthusiastic, and, as they neared the temple of justice, 
the populace thronged around them with expressions of good will. 
When they arrived in the great hall of the Four Courts, they found a little 
delay before they were permitted to enter, for the conservator of Her 
Majesty's peace in Ireland had issued orders that no one should be per- 
mitted to enter the court without a special pass. 

The traversers who had offended against the Crown and dignity 
of Britain were Charles Stewart Parnell, M. P., Thomas Sexton, M. P., 
Thomas Brennan, Secretary Land League, John Dillon, M. P., Joseph 
Gillis Biggar, M. P., Michael O'Sullivan, Assistant Secretary of the 
League, Michael Boyton, Patrick Joseph Gordon, Matthew Harris, 
John W. Lally, John W. Welsh, and P. J. Sheridan. 

These gentlemen were arraigned before the Court of Queen's Bench. 
The judges who entered to try the charges made against them by the 
Crown were : Lord Chief Justice May, Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, and Mr. 
Justice Barry. It was stated in the public press that in a recent judgment 
on some preliminaries of this case, Chief Justice May had assumed a par- 
tisan attitude — which is only very natural to the whole bench of Anglo- 
Irish judges — and it was further urged that the Lord Chief Justice was 
not a fit and proper person to preside at this political trial. As Mr. 
Gladstone wished to go through all the forms of the oracle, the Lord 
Chief Justice received an official hint to retire, which he did, after deliv- 
ering a lengthened address : the exordium on himself in relation to this 
trial, his own impartiality, and the great virtues of the British Constitu- 
tion ; then he, with a self-satisfied air, bowed to his brother judges and 
withdrew. 

There was a gigantic array of counsel engaged on the case, both for 
the prosecution and the defense. Representing the Crown there were : 
The Attorney General, the Solicitor General, Mr. Serjeant Heron, Q. C, 
Mr. John Naish, Q. C. (law adviser), Mr. David Ross, Q. C, Mr. James 
Murphy, Q. C, Mr. A. M. Porter, Q. C. Of the outer bar, the gentlemen 
of the stuff gowns, was Mr. Constantine Molloy (all instructed by Mr. Wil- 
liam Lane Joynt, Crown and Treasury Solicitor). For the defendants, 
Mr. Francis MacDonough, Q. C, Mr. Samuel Walker, Q. C, Mr. W. 
McLaughlin, Q. C, Mr. Peter O'Brien, Q. C. A goodly array of barristers 



OBSTRUCTION'S WATERLOO. 337 

was also engaged for the defense. Of these were Mr. John Curran, Mr. 
F. Nolan, Mr. Richard Adams, Mr. L. P. Dillon, Mr. A. M. Sullivan, 
M. P. (instructed by Messrs. V. B. Dillon & Co.). 

The career of an Irish barrister, who is also a patriot, is one of the 
institutions which a beneficent foreign rule has given to the island. 
Sometimes the young gentleman starts out in life as a litterateur. If at 
all possessed of the divine fire, he writes national poetry. By and by 
some of the many crusades of shame, which the unhappy people, in their 
unconscious folly support, to try and rid themselves of that Old Man of 
the Sea, alien rule ; give the young aspirant a magnificent oppor- 
tunity to air his eloquence on behalf of his unhappy land. Among 
the "crusaders" are found many able and well-educated young men 
who have neither means nbr friends to enable them to realize the full 
value of their deserts. To become a " crusader " and join the Provincial 
ranks is a magnificent opportunity. There they can denounce the British 
Government within the Constitution, " to the top of their bent " and the 
masses of their countrymen are delighted, and cheer them again and 
again. Go into a wayside inn or other resort, where the hard-working 
sons of toil gather together after one of these meetings, and you hear 
some really good criticisms on the speeches and the speaker ; for unlike 
the English agricultural laborer, who is a true descendant of Gurtha, 
the swineherd, the Irish farm hands are full of natural wit and humor ; 
but the honest peasant, keen as he thinks himself, is not qualified to criti- 
cise the speaker as he is the speeches. The young aspirant to political 
honors, if not already called to the bar, utilizes the Crusade of Shame to 
elevate himself to that social rank. The agitation goes on, and the 
Government makes some arrests. Fortunate man, if he is successful 
enough to be arrested, if he gets one or two months in prison for some 
political offense arising out of the Crusade of Shame. He is then a martyr 
and patriot ; by and by he is employed to defend political prisoners, and 
he has then the opportunity to make a great speech on behalf of his client 
for which he is well feed by his friends, the Provincialists. If he con- 
tinues in the ranks of agitation, he has the opportunity of helping to 
create some of the offenses — for Britain is easily offended — which he will 
be employed in as advocate to defend. As a rule men of this class are 
very hostile to and bitterly denounce the Nationalists, who would advocate 
what they would term illegal measures — Nationalists who try to teach the 
people how shallow is these men's patriotism who accept British law as 
legal; that law which brave men, such as Tone and Emmet, died warring 
against and never recognized. 

But if the young agitator looks for office, his speeches, defending his 
friends, mark him as a man of ability and attract the attention of the 
British Crown lawyers. Soon there comes a change of ministry and he 
gets an appointment under the new administration, and soon after we 
find him prosecuting his former friends. In a little while he is promoted 
to Law Adviser, Solicitor, and Attorney General, and soon after to the 
Bench. Or else, if he is a man of mediocre talent, he gets a chairman- 
ship of Quarter Sessions and is thus comfortably settled for life, now and 
then to moralize on his early follies. 

Among the group of legal gentlemen who defended Mr. Parnell and 
his colleagues, were men who ambitioned the latter distinctions. Two of 
these gentlemen became prominent since, as faithful British henchmen. 
Mr. Peter O'Brien, Q. C, more silky than his silk gown, has figured lately 
in several prosecutions. Recent cartoons in United Ireland confer 
upon him one of its characteristic names ; he had received the alliterative 
appelation of Pether the Packer, alluding to his weakness for packing 
juries — of course he did this: that is his duty as a loyal law officer of the 



33% THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

British Crown.* The other gentlemen, Mr. John Curran, was made pre- 
siding officer of the Dublin Castle star chamber a#d will be spoken of 
further on. 

The trial of the Land Leaguers was conducted as impartially as possi- 
ble. The jury were drawn from the ballot box honestly. Eight Catholics, 
three Protestants, and one Quaker composed the jury. The Liberal 
Government concluded they could not get a conviction before an honestly 
drawn jury, but they wished to go through the form of trial for the benefit 
of their English friends, to prove what has been often urged, that an 
Irish jury is invariably in sympathy with crime, for the valiant "Achilles" 
had concealed upon his person the dagger, coercion ; and he thought he 
needed this excuse to enable him with a show.of justice to pluck it from 
its sheath. 

The trial commenced on Tuesday morning, December 29, 1880, and 
concluded on January 25, 1881. 

The Attorney General, in making his closing speech for the Crown, 
recited a verse of one of Miss Fanny Parnell's poems, published a few 
weeks previous in the Dublin Nation, addressed to the farmers, of 
Ireland : 

Rise up and plant your feet as men where now you crawl as slaves, 
And make the harvest field your camps, or make of them your graves. 
The birds of prey are hovering round, the vultures wheel and swoop ; 
They come, the coroneted ghouls, with drum beat and with troop ; 
They come to fatten on your flesh, your children and your wives, 
Ye die but once, hold fast your lands, and if ye can your lives. 

The result of the trial was perfectly satisfactory to the " Grand Old 
Man " ; the jury disagreed, ten for acquittal and two for conviction. So 
that according to British theory there were ten sympathizers with crime 
on that highly respectable jury of Dublin citizens. 

At the end of the month of September, 1880, the killing of a landlord, 
Lord Mountmorris, caused a great deal of consternation among the class 
to which this dissolute peer belonged. The English papers and the rebel 
Orange journals circulated in Ireland made a grave charge against the 
Irish tenant farmers, and all the published reports of this event were 
headed in large letters, " Irish agrarian crime." Mr. Parnell and the Land 
League were accused of participation in this man's death. Numerous 
letters appeared in the Times and other journals condemning the agricul- 
tural community for sympathy with crime. A number of Irish peasants 
were arrested ; these arrests were made on the wildest suspicion. The 
facts connected with Lord Mountmorris' death, although they display the 
wild justice of revenge, had no connection whatever with agrarian' out- 
rages ; neither Irish land nor politics had to do with the death of this 
peer, and under similar circumstances Mountmorris might have been 
slain in any country or among any community he had so infamously out- 
raged. It is true that Lord Mountmorris was a landlord and was also 
prominent in magisterial circles, and one of the most active in antagonism 
to any amelioration of the hardships which the farming communities were 
suffering, and a most bitter opponent to Mr. Parnell's agitation ; but 
although this gave a plausible coloring to the landlords to place Lord 
Mountmorris' death in the list of agrarian crimes, it had no connection 
with the agitation whatever. Lord Mountmorris' claim to being an 
Irish landlord illustrates the number of these local tyrants, who unblush- 
ingly come before mankind as men who are injured by the Land League, 
and who having a stake in the country should be listened to in their con- 

* This gentleman has since been promoted to the position of Lord Chief Justice 
of the British Queen's Bench in Ireland. 



OBSTRUCTION'S WATERLOO. 339 

demnation of " the agitators, who are ruining the community." Lord 
Mountmorris' claim to be ranked as a landlord consisted of eleven hold- 
ings, which were let to poor tenants whose united rent amounted to 
^£50 annually — not over $250. A New York artisan would pay more rent 
yearly for the flat his family occupied than the Irish rent roll of this Irish 
peer, and to try and get a reduction in rent for the eleven poor families, 
who occupied land under this Mountmorris, and for 300,000 starving 
families similarly circumstanced, a huge agitation was started. That, 
even if successful, could not make these impoverished people prosperous, 
not even if their land was given to them ; the disease lay deeper than 
land laws. But Mountmorris' association with Irish land gave Ireland's 
enemies an opportunity to stamp his death as agrarian. This man was a 
brutal libertine. A few days before his death he entered an Irish cabin 
where a young woman, the daughter of an humble farmer, was occupied 
in household duties ; a boy a relative of the young girl was also in the 
cabin. Mountmorris under some pretext sent the boy on an errand. The 
Irish peasant girl, to whom Mountmorris had made previous advances, 
locked herself in an adjoining room when the boy had departed. Mount- 
morris burst in the door, and the poor girl's screams and struggles brought 
timely assistance. Mountmorris, alarmed, beat a hasty retreat and 
succeeded for the time in getting off. The brother of the girl that this 
titled ruffian had ruined, with others, was on his trail. On the following 
Saturday Mountmorris attended a meeting of magistrates and landlords 
held in the court house, Clonbur, a small town in the province of Con- 
naught. After the meeting Mountmorris, who had been drinking heavily, 
drove home on his own side car. About a mile from Clonbur, at a place 
called Rusheen, he was stopped by the young Irish peasant, whose honor 
he had outraged. Mountmorris, under the influence of drink, was abusive 
and struck the young man with his whip ; the youth responded by drawing 
a loaded revolver and shooting the village despot and libertine. These 
are the facts as told the writer when traveling in Ireland during that year 
a short time after the occurrence, and which were repeated in the city of 
New York a short time since by an Irish clergyman, a tourist through the 
United States, who talked over this sad and tragic business. Lord Lei- 
trim came by his death for a similar cause, and yet these killings give rise 
to a series of charges against the Irish farming community, and are dis- 
cussed in the British Parliament with all seriousness as cases of the Irish 
'■and war. 

The Irish members under Mr. Parnell's leadership mustered in all their 
strength to open what proved to be a final campaign of " obstruction." 
Ireland could never be and had never been served more ably or with greater 
skill and determination from a Provincial standpoint than she was at this 
period by those then faithful men who followed Mr. Parnell's leadership 
— men of multifarious abilities, thorough Parliamentarians, masters of 
the rules of debate and all the intricacies of the House and its laws. 

From the debate on the Queen's speech the Irish members began a 
determined opposition. They exhausted all the forms of the House, 
and for a time placed an effectual bar to legislation. The usual course 
with important Government measures is to permit the introdution of a 
bill without any debate. Even on the first reading opposition is very 
seldom resorted to ; the stage where the great struggle takes place 
between Ministers and the Opposition is on the second reading. But the 
old tactics of wordy warfare did not suit the Irish party ; full of determi- 
nation and courage, sanguine of success, as they had already announced, 
they commenced their obstructive tactics to kill Mr. Gladstone's Coercion 
Bill. Monday, February 2, arrived before the Ministry found an oppor- 
tunity to bring in a motion asking leave to introduce their coercion meas- 



34° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

ure, which they named, " Protection to Persons and Property (Ireland) 
Bill." The announcement, made by Mr. Forster, whom Mr. Gladstone 
selected to take charge of the measure, was received with uncompromising- 
hostility by the Irish members. They began a determined onslaught at 
the very mention of coercion. 

This famous sitting commenced at 4 p. m. on Monday of that event- 
ful week in Irish Parliamentary agitation. The British were now familiar 
with the Irish obstructive policy ; the Government gave its followers 
instructions to take no part in the debate, thereby hoping to tire out the 
Parnellites. According to the then Parliamentary rules each member 
could make two motions — one for the adjourning of the debate and the 
other for the adjournment of the House. There was no limit to the time 
occupied in addressing the House, and each member could speak on each 
separate motion. By observing these rules the Irish party hoped to 
weary out the Government and delay coercion. What a strange delusion 
to think such tactics could be successful ! 

Dinner hour came and the thinned House listened to the monotonous 
sound of one of the Parnellite speakers talking against time, determined 
to stand upon his feet as long as human endurance could sustain the 
task. Mr. Biggar was ever on the watch with eagle eye to have the 
House counted out, but the Ministers had always at hand either in the 
smoking room or library a number of adherents more than sufficient to 
make a House ; at the signal the House was being counted, with muttered 
execrations against the Irish, the Liberal members came trooping into the 
chamber, to leave again when the form of being counted was over. Mid- 
night came and with it came a fresh crowd of Liberals from the 
theaters or from dinner parties or receptions, exquisites in evening 
dress, Parliamentary Dundrearies, vowing mental vengeance against the 
" doosed Irish cads" who were so ungentlemanly as to interfere with the 
solemn procedure of the House. 

The morning came — still on went the monotonous unceasing flow 
of words. Words! words! words! Gatling guns of talk! rolls of 
musketry, sweeping volleys of verbiage, one-hundred-ton guns vomiting 
forth shells charged with the most powerful adjectives. The day grew 
brighter, the noon time came, and the battle of the verbal musketry 
could still be heard in St. Stephen's. Shells exploded charged with the 
most determined expressions of opinion. The Irish mitrailleuses swept 
down the "Grand Old Man's" army. But a fresh corps of "Achilles'" 
veterans took their place to meet the dreadful onslaught of talk ! talk ! 
which the Irish tirailleurs opened upon their flank and rear. Anon the 
Parnellite artillery, refreshed and supplied with the most powerful ammuni- 
tion which Webster, Worcester, Johnson, and Walker could furnish, sent 
forth shrapnel shells of denunciation, huge bombs of argument. Their 
cannoneering was followed by brilliant bayonet charges of opinion, and as 
interruptedly now and then the trumpet charge of the division bell rang 
out, when the Irish cavalry was again and again forced back by the giant 
squadrons of " Achilles," each time the Irish Hector and his valiant friends 
were compelled to withdraw within their trenches, but only to open afresh 
their batteries from behind another epaulement near one of the salient 
angles of the great fortress Coercion. The gallant A. M. Sullivan shakes 
his fist in the face of the " Grand Old Man " as he pours an unceasing 
volley of grenades charged with the choicest explosives that Walker 
could supply into the tent of " Achilles," The dashing Tim Healy 
is now to the front, and right well he supplies his guns with chilled steel 
shot of the most approved Johnsonian phrases. And so passes that long 
and memorable day. Tuesday night came to witness another strange and 
peculiar combat. The gas was lit ; the Speaker was compelled to retire 



OBSTRUCTION'S WATERLOO. 341 

and leave a deputy in the chair. Human endurance was put to the greatest 
strain. Midnight came, but still the Parnellites kept up the fight right 
gallantly. Their arsenals were overhauled for fresh weapons of attack. 
The steady stream of Irish talk flowed on unceasingly. Wednesday 
morning dawned, and the jaded Irish were still on their feet. If victories 
could be won by talk what gallant heroes the Irish phalanx were ! In all 
the daring and heroic events and incidents recorded in ancient and 
modern history no greater feat of talking for a nation's freedom had ever 
been attempted ; nothing approaching it is on record in the annals of the 
human family. 

The " Grand Old Man " enters the House. There is a sternness in the 
glance of " Achilles," as if he meant to crush his foes beneath his iron heel. 
But the Irish are in no way influenced by the presence of the Prime Minis- 
ter ; their leader looks with icy gaze, in which is blended hostility and 
determination, so peculiar to Mr. Parnell before he fell beneath the 
glamour of Gladstone's cunning. This morning he is Irish of the Irish 
in his unrelenting opposition to the English Premier's coercion, a feeling 
which influenced his countrymen to believe there were latent fires within. 

Fight well, gallant Irish Hector, for this fight is your Waterloo ; 
already the Prussians are on your flanks and the last great battle of 
obstruction is near its close. Soon your foes shall be victors in the strife 
upon the very ground you yourself selected and told your countrymen 
would bring success. Already "Achilles" looks as if the news of the 
approaching Prussians had been conveyed to him. 

Mr. Biggar is on his feet. The gallant Ulsterman shakes his mane 
as if thirsting for another and prolonged use of Walker's ammunition. 
But hush ! The Speaker rises and in slow and solemn tones stops the 
debate ! 

This is a Parliamentary coup d'etat — as violent an assault on Parlia- 
mentary liberties as when Louis Napoleon assaulted French opinion by 
sweeping the Parisian boulevards with his artillery to establish the Second 
Empire. 

Never in British constitutional history has there been such a gross 
violation of the liberties of Parliament. In Charles I. and Cromwell's 
assault on Parliament it was an outside despotic invasion of the House. 
But this violation of Parliamentary freedom comes from the Speaker of 
the House ; its guardian and protector becomes its destroyer. At the 
very fountain head and seat of honor sat foul corruption to destroy the 
purity of its liberties. By the arbitrary ruling of one man the Commons 
of England have been illegally stopped debating a motion before that 
House. 

While the Speaker, Mr. Brandt, is on his feet, the Britons look tri- 
umphant and level glances of victory and hatred at the Irish contingent. 

This historic and memorable scene, the death of Irish "constitu- 
tional " agitation, was worthy of the brush of a David, a Maclise, a Mul- 
ready, a Bougereau, or a Meissonier. Mr. Parnell and thirty-five Irish 
members arose from their seats, and holding their right hands aloft, pro- 
tested against this wanton Parliamentary outrage. The thirty-six voices 
shouted, " Privilege ! privilege ! " but there was no "privilege " for these 
mere Irish in that foreign legislative chamber, the portals of which as 
Irish patriots they never should have crossed. The enraged Britons 
shouted back in venomous tones a cry once heard in an Eastern city : 
"Away with them ! away with them ! " So closed this historic sitting of 
the British Commons, which lasted for 41^ hours, from four o'clock 
Monday afternoon until 9.30 a. m. Wednesday, February 4, 1881. 

" Achilles" had, indeed, bent his bow. Verily, we thank thee, Mr. 
Freeman s Journal, for the words. The Irish were completely routed ; 



342 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

it was the last stand of the "obstructives" ; the weapon they depended 
upon when the hour of trial came broke to pieces in their grasp. Truly 
did Isaac Butt say that war in Parliament should be quickly changed to 
its natural place, the field, or else surrender. Mr. Parnell and his bril- 
liant following, who had so often told their countrymen in America and 
Ireland (and had made many believe it true) what great things for Ire- 
land they would do in Parliament, and that no British Minister could 
legally withstand them, now find that the Speaker of the House breaks 
the law of Parliament, violates the sanctity, dignity, and privilege of the 
House of Commons. The angry Briton, driven to bay by the Irish tactics, 
breaks his own law and hurls the pieces in the Irishman's face. 

What next, gallant Hector? What do you propose now, Charles 
Stewart Parnell ? There are millions of your race thirsting for the news ; 
they await the presence of another Lord Edward to lead them in the final 
struggle to redeem their motherland. The absurd folly of using talk as 
weapons against the foe, has now been forced with convincing" proof upon 
}'Ou. You are now in full possession of the knowledge that another 
and different plan of campaign is necessary. We await the development 
that must produce the change. We wait with patience, grandson of 
Old Ironsides. But there will not, cannot be a long delay for you to 
make up your mind. 

The Liberal Government was now in a fighting mood ; that veneer of 
liberality toward Ireland was swept away ; " Coercion that country must 
have" said the " grandest of grand old men," and coercion she received. 
The House met again that noon and the course of legislation now flowed 
as freely as if there were no Irish members elected to oppose it. The 
following Thursday evening the Irish made another rally ; it was the last 
muster of a routed army. 

That day, Februarys, 1881, as Mr. Michael Davitt was crossing Carlisle 
Bridge in company with Mr. Thomas Brennan and Mr. Matthew Harris 
lie was arrested, his ticket of leave was revoked, and he had once 
again to don the convict's striped uniform, which he first put on because 
he wished to supply his countrymen with more powerful weapons than 
those he had been recently advocating the use of. 

The scene in the House that night was a slight replica of the early 
week. Mr. Parnell arose in his seat and with the tone and manner of the 
fiery Celt, unlike his usual calmness, said : "I beg to ask the Secretary 
of State for the Home Department whether Mr. Michael Davitt was 
arrested at one o'clock to-day." (Cheers.) 

Sir Wm. Vernon Harcourt (the man whom deluded Irishmen hail to- 
day as a Home Ruler) arose to reply : " Yes, sir." 

We cannot picture except in a faint manner the scene thai followed 
when the Home Secretary uttered these words. The whole House 
broke into loud and uproarious cheering ; the Liberal members seemed 
to grow frantic with delight at the news that an Irishman, a Home 
Ruler, had been arbitrarily arrested and sent to prison. These worthy 
English Home Rulers of to-day must have indeed changed. 

The Home Secretary continued : " After consultation with my col- 
lagues the law officers of the Crown and the Secretary to the Lord Lieuten- 
ant, I have come to the decision that the conduct of Michael Davitt has 
been incompatible with the ticket of leave by which a convict enjoying 
the conditional favor of the Crown is permitted to be at large." (Cheers 
from the English members ; cries of " Shame ! " from the Irish party.) 

Mr. Parnell, rising, then said : " I beg to ask the Home Secretary which 
are the conditions which Michael Davitt has violated." With an expres- 
sion of contempt upon his face for the beaten Irish leader Sir Wm. Ver- 
non Harcourt made no reply. Vainly the Irish cry, " Answer! answer! " 



OBSTRUCTION'S WATERLOO. 343 

And yet Irishmen are told in all seriousness to-day that this bitter enemy 
Harcourt is a convert to Irish Home Rule ! 

Mr. Gladstone arose to move the closure. Yes ! this gagging of the 
British Commons was first introduced by the Liberal leader, and passed 
into law by a Liberal Parliament. Mr. Parnell, interrupting, said : " I beg 
to insist as a member of this House upon my right to move that the Right 
Honorable gentleman [the Prime Minister] be no longer heard." A scene 
here arose in the House. Mr. Parnell was very excited ; he was deter- 
mined to insist, but he was powerless to enforce his supposed right as a 
member of the British Parliament. 

The English Premier arose, and with a look of passion on his face as 
he gazed on the Irish leader, he named Mr. Parnell, and by a vote of 405 
against 7 the Irish leader was expelled from the sitting. Mr. Parnell 
declined to withdraw, but British physical force came in here. The 
sergeant-at-arms accompanied by three assistants put his hand upon Mr. 
ParneU'sarm; the Irish leader seemed to shrink from the touch, and, rising, 
bowed to the Speaker and withdrew. Mr. Dillon had been already expelled 
for a similar cause. Then Mr. Finnegan arose and moved that Mr. Glad- 
stone be no longer heard. The same scene, the usual division, and he 
was also sent out of the chamber. The Government tellers then informed 
the Speaker that the Irish members remained in their places and refused to- 
vote. They were then all named and one after the other expelled. The fol- 
lowing are the names of those Irishmen whom the Parliament of the " Grand 1 
Old Man " expelled from the sitting of the House : Messrs. Dillon, Par- 
nell, Finnegan, Barry, Biggar, Byrne, Corbet, Daly, Dawson, Gill, E. D.. 
Gray, Healy, Lalor, Leamy, Leahy, McCarthy, McCoan, Marum, Metge, 
Nelson, Arthur O'Connor, T. P. O'Connor, O'Donoghue, O'Gorman 
Mahon, O'Sullivan, O'Connor Power, Redmond, Sexton, Smithwick, 
A. M. Sullivan, T. D. Sullivan, Molloy, O'Kelly, O'Donnell, R. O. Power, 
O'Shaughnessy. As The O'Gorman Mahon was leaving, the old veteran 
drew himself up and said it was the biggest insult he had ever received 
in his life. The old gentleman remembered O'Connell's election for 
Clare in 1828. and took part in that contest. In those dueling days men 
were slow to insult the gallant major, who was known to be an unerring 
shot. So ended the great struggle of obstruction. Public passion 
was strong that week in London. The writer remembers visiting with 
some English friends a Radical club that night. What joy of a very 
demonstrative character did those workingmen display when they heard 
that the Irish members were expelled from Parliament. How they 
gloated over the discomfiture and defeat of those " insolent Irish " who 
dared to oppose the great Gladstone. Race hatred came out in every 
speech. An Irishman who was present arose to speak ; the Britons 
howled and yelled ; he held his position before the chairman, but it was 
vain to expect a hearing. The whole torrent of the workingman's wrath 
was leveled against everybody and everything Irish. 

Mr. Gladstone, when the Irish members were expelled from the 
House, went on with his speech in favor of closure. In the course of 
his remarks he said : 

" My belief is this— and I hope I shall not state it too strongly, 
though I own I should use strong words in referring to the conditions of 
the House — that we have been passing through the stages of pain, 
embarrassment, and even of discredit, and that the stages which remain 
unless you arrest the fatal descent are the stages of just ridicule, of dis- 
grace, and of contempt. (" Hear, hear.") That being so, let us now 
come to the terms of my motion. 



344 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

"There are two modes of procedure which have been recently referred 
to by you, sir, from the chair. The one is arming the House with strong 
and efficient powers of intervention with the course of its own procedure 
from time to time. The other is making the experiment of placing 
power over our procedure in the hands of the Speaker. . ." 

Mr. Gladstone has since stood up and rebuked the Tories when, fol- 
lowing his good Liberal example, they re-enacted coercion, but not by 
any means as strong as the coercive measures then enforced by the 
Liberal leader. 

The Irish people who had any genuine National feeling felt keenly 
the insult which the Government of Mr. Gladstone had cast upon them, 
and they felt also that so long as this crusade of shame distracted their 
people so long would they remain powerless to resent the repeated 
injuries and infamies of their British foe. 

At length a letter came from Mr. Parnell addressed to the League 
Council in Dublin. It was evidently the product of the matured consid- 
eration of the Irish leader on the recent crisis and the defeat of his Parlia- 
mentary obstruction tactics. If the words written and the advice then 
given were the real sentiments animating the breast of Charles Stewart 
Parnell, then Mr. Parnell had hopelessly failed as an Irish leader, and the 
Irish people should have looked out for a man of greater determination 
and one prepared to make more serious sacrifices for his nation's freedom. 
But the best and truest of the people did not so believe these public utter- 
ances ; they still clung to the belief, a belief which they also held for 
O'Connell in his early Repeal days, that when the time would suit and 
events ripen the pathway of talk would lead to the field of blows. Of 
what nature these should be was a question for the judgment of thinking 
minds and the resources and circumstances which occasion might bring 
forth. The letter was sent from Paris on February 16, twelve days 
after the Irish members were expelled from the House : 

" The Government of England has adopted the rule of coercion and 
intimidation against our people at home and their representatives in 
Parliament, and has practically attempted to drive both one and the 
other outside the limits of the constitution by the use of unconstitutional 
and illegal means in Parliament and the country. Two courses appear 
open to us : The first, that the Irish members should retire in a body 
from the House of Commons and announce to their constituents that the 
constitutional weapon of Parliamentary representation has been snatched 
from our hands, and that nothing remains but sullen acquiescence or an 
appeal to force in opposition to that force which has been used against us. 
The second and only other alternative appears to be that we should 
steadfastly labor on deepening the lines and widening the area of our 
agitation, appealing to the masses of the population of England and 
Scotland,. . . . appealing, I say, against the territorialism and shopoc- 
racy which dominate Parliament to the workingman and agricultural 
laborers of Britain. . . 

" I have dismissed the first of these courses from consideration, but the sec- 
ond alternative presents to me many elements of hope and ultimate success. 

" The honor of Ireland is in the keeping of her 600,000 tenant farmers, 
and I ask them to preserve the union and organization which have already 
gained such great results. If they do this and persist in their refusal to 
pay unjust rents, and in their refusal to take farms from which others have 
been unjustly evicted, a brilliant victory and the peace and prosperity of 
our country will be their near and certain reward. 

" I remain, gentlemen, yours faithfully, 

" Charles Stewart Parnell." 



OBSTRUCTION'S WATERLOO. 345 

When the Nationalists read this letter at the time they looked upon 
it as a diplomatic document written for the express purpose of throwing 
dust in the eyes of the enemy. They did not think that any such mani- 
festo from an Irish leader with the reputation and ability of Mr. Parnell 
was, even for diplomatic purposes, right, as it had a most injurious effect 
upon the only men which all leaders could rely upon in any crisis of their 
country's history where taik would end and work begin. But the sad 
fact is forcing itself upon them day by day, that with the exception of a 
momentary burst of passion, which occurred at a later period, Mr. Parnell 
was after all but Mr. O'Connell redivivus, without that great orator's 
silver tongue. 

Let Irishmen look calmly upon the opinion given by a leader of a 
nation to the people. It is not for a moment meant that Mr. Parnell should 
have issued publicly in the then state of Ireland any such manifesto as 
an open appeal to arms, but he could have adopted one portion of his 
first course publicly by calling on his followers to remain out of Parlia- 
ment, as they were already expelled from thence, and told Irish peo- 
ple all the world over that Ireland had no constitution within which 
she could agitate her rights ; that moral suasion had again proved a 
hopeless and useless means of redress, and that there were but two courses 
open to the Irish race : absolute submission and to patiently bide the 
time of their extinction as a race at home, or else ! 

But when Mr. Parnell tells the Irish farmers that they alone have the 
honor of the nation in their guardianship, and that that nation's honor 
consists in what they (the Irish farmers) consider a just rent, he degrades 
and insults the national honor, and places hucksters and money-lenders 
inside the temple of liberty, and permits them to wipe their feet in the 
flag of the nation. This even for a diplomatic document was too much ; 
but when he calmly tells the farmers, and through them the whole Irish 
race, that their organization had " already gained such great results" in 
the face of the utter and complete defeat which had overtaken the party 
both in Parliament and in the country, and on the eve of still greater 
defeats, it seems to almost insult the intelligence of the whole people. 

Mr. Parnell's next move was an appeal to the great revolutionist 
and poet Victor Hugo. Nationalists regretted the persistence with 
which Mr. Parnell clung to the idea of public opinion as a weapon 
to fight England with. Speaking of the famine and landlordism he says 
in his letter to the illustrious Frenchman : 

" We are struggling against the system which produced these horrors. 
It is to put an end to it once for all that we appeal to the consciences of 
all honest men without distinction of creed, party, or nationality; it is to that 
end that we ask them to aid us in representing to England the odious charac- 
ter of her conduct toward us — in recommending her, in short, to do justice 
to our people. As you, honored sir, have so well roused the sympathy 
of the human race for ' les miserables,' we feel that our appeal will go 
straight to your heart, and we are sure that you will raise your voice in 
favor of a brave but unfortunate nation." 

Mr. Parnell informed the great French poet that they were struggling 
against the source of Irish evils. 

This was not so. The Provincialists were carrying on a crusade of ex- 
posing the horrors of the system — Ireland's poverty, starvation, cold, and 
hunger — to the world. This was done to enlist public sympathy and con- 
demnation of landlordism, one of the evils of foreign rule. But that 
which made such evils possible, the British connection, was, according to 
their programme, to in part continue. They endeavored to remove the 
evil effects of the system, while the source, British rule, was to remain. 

As well ask a man to get healthy who daily consumes large quantities 



346 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

of arsenic. Foreign rule in Ireland and the horrors of poverty are con- 
vertible terms, meaning one and the same thing. Were it possible to 
remove landlordism some other equally foreign " ism " as destructive to 
their country would continue, and will so long as the slightest vestige of 
alien rule remains. 

A meeting of the League Council was held in Dublin. There were 
several speeches denouncing Mr. Gladstone and protesting against the 
arrest of Mr. Davitt. Mr. Thomas Brennan and Mr. P. J. Sheridan 
made very able addresses. Mr. Patrick Egan made a stirring and able 
attack on the renegade Irish members who went over to Mr. Gladstone 
and deserted their colleagues. Mr. Patrick Egan, if he were to repeat 
his speech to-day, would have to denounce the whole Irish party, for they 
have all gone over to Mr. Gladstone. Possibly Mr. Egan would not 
admit this, but it is nevertheless a fact. Mr. Egan at this meeting said 
that while Mr. Parnell' and his noble followers, Mr. Dillon and Mr. 
E. D. Gray, and some forty other members, could not be spoken of 
in terms of praise too flattering for the splendid struggle they had 
made against the brute force of the English majority in the House 
of Commons, no language could be too strong to condemn the rene- 
gade members who deserted in face of the enemy. The leading 
renegade was Mr. Shaw, the member for Cork County. With him were 
such men as Colonel Colthurst, Count Moore of Clonmel, the Messrs. 
Blennerhassitt, Patrick Martin, Sir Patrick O'Brien, the renegade member 
for Dublin, Maurice Brooks, who at the meeting in the City Hall deliber- 
ately pledged himself k) act with the Irish people, but who when he got to 
the House of Commons deserted them and went over to the Government. 
There was also Mr. Meldon, the whitewashed Whig member for Kildare, 
the miserable creature who represented, or rather misrepresented, Long- 
ford, Mr. Errington, Mr. Collins of Clonmel, Mr. Mitchell Henry, the 
member for Galway whom they might leave in the hands of his 
constituents, Major O'Beirne, Mr. Lewis O'Connor, Mr. Levey, and Mr. 
Fay of Cavan. Mr. Fay got in on the last election under false pretenses- 
and under the wing of Mr. Biggar. Although he could do nothing now 
but sneer at the Irish party, he patted them on the back and advised the 
adoption of obstruction, but when there was work to do he deserted. 
There was yet one other of whom he spoke with regret — a man who once 
did yeoman service for Ireland — Mr. P. J. Smith. The fact that he 
represented an Irish constituency was one of the great evidences of Irish 
toleration. But for that toleration Mr. Smith's eccentricities would 
have relegated him to obscurity long ago. However, the people did 
not forget his services side by side with John Mitchel, John Martin, 
and others. These men passed in London as the representatives of the 
Irish people. They were now branded with the letters • B. C.,' and would 
at the next election receive the reward of all bad characters. 

The Irish people had no reason to complain of any paucity of mani- 
festoes. The men controlling the League never permitted an occasion to 
pass without producing its attendant official document, which was 
generally the exposing of some evil and its consequent condemnation ; 
but at this time protests were on the increase, as they have been lately. 
The documents of this meeting contained a protest against the arrest of 
Michael Davitt. It contained these sentences : 

" Yesterday a man well known to us and to many of you during these 
recent events as a counselor of tolerance, restraint, and prudence has 
been seized without warning and flung back into the horrors of penal 
servitude. 

"Fellow-countrymen, we adjure you in the midst of these trials and 



OBSTRUCTION'S WATERLOO. 347 

provocations to maintain the noble attitude that has already assured your 
ultimate victory. Reject every temptation to conflict, disorder, or crime. 
Be not terrorized by a brief reign of despotism. If you are true to 
yourselves your triumph is certain." 

That "noble attitude " their countrymen were to continue in was the 
policy of doing nothing. Truly Christian forbearance this ; and the Irish 
nation having received one slap on the cheek from the " Grand Old Man," 
was to turn the other and so remain " true to itself" waiting for another 
blow, which soon came. 

Mr. Parnell, speaking on the arrest of Mr. Davitt, said : "The late 
Government of course could have withdrawn his ticket of leave instead of 
prosecuting him ; but the Tories are not so shabby as the so-called Liberals, 
and they straightforwardly brought him before the ordinary tribunals and 
charged him with sedition." Nationalists agree with Mr. Parnell's utter- 
ances here. Of the two parties that are almost equally trying to crush out 
the Irish race in proportion to their term of power, the meanest, basest, 
most hypocritical and cruel, are the " so-called Liberals," for they try to 
sneak into Irish favor when in opposition to procure for their hollow 
promises the Irish vote to help them back to the spoils of office and of 
power, and when there "they can smile and smile, and murder while they 
smile." 

Events were now crowding thick and fast upon Ireland in her struggle 
with the usurper that ruled the nation. All difference of policy was lost 
sight of in the face of the common foe, and energetic men, both National- 
ists and Provincialists, felt that some war of reprisal, some active meas- 
ures, should be taken to meet the coming storm. The sullen mutterings of 
approaching danger were visible on the political horizon ; black and murky 
clouds were lowering over the land. It was the great crisis that tried 
men's souls. The Parnellite organization at this time was the legal de- 
pository of Ireland's authority. Not only had the people in Ireland given 
it full and absolute control, but this power was sanctioned by the 
public indorsement of the Irish race all the world over. Whatever steps 
this Irish government should take to meet this emergency, either secret 
or open, could not be afterward legally repudiated by the race that clothed 
it with supreme authority. 

What was the condition of this Irish government or Parnellite 
organization at this time ? The weak members, who ought to have been 
with their comrades during this great strain, not only fled from Ireland, 
but from Britain. These men's timidity and fear of arrest by the enemy 
were despicable. Some few of the leaders were absent on what might 
appear plausible and just reasons, but no duty of any nature should keep 
a patriotic man away from his post during such a stormy period in his 
country's history. These absent and weak leaders are as fully responsible 
for the policy adopted as if they sat with their colleagues at the council board. 
It is vain for them to say that they did not and do not approve of the 
course forced upon the Irish people, and gladly embraced by the more 
daring and manlier portion of the men at home. As well might absent 
Ministers from a Cabinet Council repudiate the policy adopted, and which 
they were not there to oppose, after the nation's soldiers had attacked 
the foe. 

What this new power was which was about to appear upon the scene, 
created and clothed with legal authority by the Parnellite Irish govern- 
ment, this history will deal with later. Whatever its nature the public 
voice continued to protest against the foreigner's brutal despotism in 
Ireland, and was apparently content with these denunciations. 

But leaving for the present the manlier and more statesmanlike por- 
tion of the Parnellite Irish Government, who, unflinchingly, held their 



348 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

post of duty at the helm of the Irish ship of state, to dauntlessly pursue 
a more active policy, this history, to teach a useful lesson to Irishmen 
and point a moral as to what should be Ireland's action, will return to the 
gallant Dutch of the Transvaal, who for the greatest part of this time 
had been carrying on a crusade of shame against Britain similar to that 
of the Irish Provincialists. But when the Boers found that course a 
folly they took a bold and manlier stand, publicly maintaining the right- 
eousness of their cause before the world, and in advance of an appeal to 
force they openly proclaimed their determination to resort to the only 
final solution possible for an enslaved people. 

These Boers were actually wicked enough to shoot down British 
soldiers and commit " crime and outrage." The next chapter will give a 
short history of that " crime." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

(r88i.) 

THE BOERS DISCOVER A CRUSADE OF SHAME USELESS — THEY ARE COM- 
PELLED TO RESORT TO " CRIME AND OUTRAGE." 

Dutch Boers' Views Change about England — Colonel Lanyon's Bogus Petition — The Boers 
Tire of the Crusade of Shame — Deputation to Holland — Reception in London — 
Mr. Gladstone's Treatment — Refuses to Make Good his Promises — Arrest of Boers by 
the British — Their Refusal to Pay Taxes — Similar Crisis to Parnell's — Boer Deter- 
mination — Gravity of their Position — Republic Declared at Heidelberg — Boer 
Triangle — Proclamation of Boers — Colonel Lanyon's Answering Proclamation — 
Gladstone's Attack on Beaconsfleld when in Opposition — He Denounces the Annexa- 
tion of the Boers — His Hypocrisy — Britain's Weakness — A Nation of Money-bags, 
not Soldiers — Her Great Necessity, Peace — "Crime and Outrage" — "Murderous 
Attack on the 94th Regiment" — " Outrage by Boers" — Defeat and Capture of the 
Regiment — British Re-enforcements — Martial Law Proclaimed by the British — Cape 
Times Denouces the Boers as Murderers — London Times calls for Stern Measures — 
Professor Hartin of Holland's Petition for Peace — Signed by Thousands of the Lead- 
ing Dutch — Its Rejection by Mr. Gladstone — Battle of Laing's Nek — Defeat and 
Rout of the British — " Africa for Africanders " — Boer Account of the Fight — British 
Government Refuses Boers Belligerent Rights — Rebels to be Hanged if Captured — 
Rejection of Mr. Rylands' Motion for Peace — Mr. Gladstone Determined on Further 
Bloodshed — Battle of Ingogo — Another British Defeat — Sir George Colley's Forces 
nearly Surrounded and Cut Off — British Wounded on the Field all Night — Boer War 
Song — Arrival of British Veteran Troops from India — Men of the Famous March 
from Cabul to Candahar — General Colley with British Veterans Seizes Majuba Hill — 
Battle of Majuba Hill — Stormed and Captured by the Boers — General Colley Killed 
— The Veteran Rifles and Highlanders Run for their Lives — Shot Down like 
Rabbits by the Boers — Gladstone Reluctantly Compelled to Make Peace — Wolseley's 
Proud Boast — Restoration of the South African Republic — Mr. Gladstone's Actions — 
Bloodshed in Ireland, South Africa, and the Soudan. 

The Dutch farmers of the Transvaal, South Africa, had experienced 
one year of British rule. Like the Irish, they tried every possible means to 
settle their difficulties with the British peacefully. In vain they expostu- 
lated, petitioned, and remonstrated ; the all-conquering Briton was inexo- 
rable. He considered he had a right divine to take possession of their 
country as he did Ireland, and to administer its affairs ; not to submit to 
his rule was rebellion. The Boers began to lose their faith in the high 
character of Englishmen, and saw there was a great difference between 
the cosmopolitan traveled Anglo-Saxon which they met and the grasping, 
avaricious tendencies of their Government — a government which after 
all enforced the wishes of its people, for in Britain it is truly a repre- 
sentative administration, and is the reflex of the opinions of the great 
majority of the British voters. 

The British Government in South Africa ignored all the opinions of 
the Boers, and as in Ireland tried to make the world believe these hostile 
expressions were not the real sentiments of the people of the Transvaal, 
but merely the work of agitators. Colonel Sir Wm. Lanyon, the British 
governor in Pretoria, the Transvaal capital, with the cool audacity of 
a Briton, insisting his lie was truth, got up a petition to the British Crown 
asking that government not to reverse their policy, but to insist on the 
annexation of the Transvaal. This petition was supposed to represent 
the real feelings of the Boers, just as a few fanatic Orangemen in a 
corner of Ulster are represented to the world as the exponents of Irish 

349 



35° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

opinion in that province, which, like the rest of Ireland, has been always 
hostile to British rule in the country. The watchword " Remember Orr " 
became a cry for the patriots who took the field in 1798 against Britain, 
and nowhere were the enemy more determinedly opposed than they were 
by the gallant Ulstermen, who fought the battle of Antrim, during that san- 
guinary epoch of Irish history. The Dutch Boers, according to Colonel 
Lanyon, were loyal to the British connection, hence this mock petition. 

Meanwhile the Boers were exhausting every possible peaceful avenue. 
They were quite as energetic as Mr. Parnell in their crusade of shaming 
England into granting them the restoration of native rule. 

To appeal to the English people and Government directly, they sent 
over delegates to Europe, they visited Holland, the cradle of their race, 
and by the help of their European friends, and the agents of the Orange 
Free State, a sister African republic, they received valuable introductions 
to leading European statesmen. 

They were the representatives of a brave, steady, and industrious race, 
whom England in her career of conquest was determined to plunder not 
only of freedom, but of their substance, which career of systematic 
robbery follows the British union jack wherever it flies. 

The election of Mr. Gladstone to power all but convinced the Boers 
that the restoration of their Government would now be peacefully assured. 

European statesmen were making those combinations with each other 
which never developed, for Britain's surrender kept the Orange Free State 
from taking the field in support of the Boers; had this action been taken 
by the neighboring republic it might have spread an inconvenient confla- 
gration inimical to Britain's most important interest, peace. 

Their kindred in Holland pooh-poohed the idea of a resort to arms. 
Apart from the criminality of bloodshed, they considered it totally un- 
necessary. Not only had they right and justice on their side, but here 
was the greatest of English Ministers in power, and once they succeeded 
in having an interview with Mr. Gladstone, who had denounced the annex- 
ation and the Tory Administration for its taking over the Transvaal 
Government, the country would, as a matter of course, be peacefully 
restored to the Boers. 

Mr. Gladstone was fully restored to health and engaged in official 
duties when the Boer delegates, accompanied by some Holland friends, 
waited on the great Liberal. Mr. Gladstone was politeness and cordiality 
personified. He wished them to see Lord Granville, and also the Minister 
for the Colonies. The patient Dutch gentlemen spent some time linger- 
ing about the neighborhood of Downing Street ; but the great Liberal 
Ministers kept on washing their hands with invisible soap, but did not 
seem inclined to wash their hands free of the Transvaal affairs. Eventu- 
ally a message came from the " Grand Old Man " that unfortunately the 
annexation of the South African republic was an accomplished fact which 
no British Minister could undo. But anything that could be done to 
improve the condition of the Queen's new subjects would be the duty and 
wish of her Majesty's Ministers. In short the Dutch Boers were to be 
made happier under British rule than they could be under their own, with 
which statement Irishmen are overfamiliar. Judge the astonishment of 
the simple Dutch Boers when they found that the idol of the English 
Liberals, the great statesman, Mr. Gladstone, was in no way different from 
his Tory predecessor. The veil had fallen from their eyes and the " Grand 
Old Man "was in their estimation a cruel and clever hypocrite. The 
writer remembers some time after meeting some of these Holland gentle- 
men; they had formed a true estimate of the Premier's liberality, a feel- 
ing which we shared with them at that time and for years before, and do 
to the present hour. 



THE BOERS DISCOVER A CRUSADE OF SHAME USELESS. 351 

The Boers in Africa were in the meantime growing weary of the 
crusade of shame. The men of their party who were arrested by the 
British for what was termed by the invaders sedition were looked upon 
and spoken of in the Boer journals as martyrs. 

On September 21, 1880, a meeting of the Boers' sub-committee was 
held at Key's River, when the report of Messrs. Kruger, Joubert, and 
Joussier on their mission to the Cape Colony was read and resolutions 
were received and adopted thanking friends and delegates in the Colony 
and declaring Pretorius and Bok martyrs. 

On October 12 Ludvvig Bok, a son of Adam Bok, who was in prison 
for sedition, was arrested on suspicion of conspiring against the English 
Government. The English authorities, now for one year under the con- 
trol of the Liberal Premier, were carrying things with a high hand in 
South Africa. 

On October 19 the Boers at Pochefstroom, of the Schoonsprint dis- 
trict, to the number of 1200, refused to pay any more taxes. The British 
sent a sheriff and wagon to bring away the farm produce in lieu of the 
sum levied on one of these recalcitrant farmers. But the Boers inter- 
fered and took the wagon from the sheriff, making that worthy function- 
ary their prisoner. When this news was brought to the British governor 
at Pretoria, Colonel Sir W. Lanyon, he was very indignant ; troops were 
sent from that town and from Rustenburg to chastise and make prisoners 
the rebellious farmers. 

The self-same crisis was now forced upon Mr. Paul Kruger and the 
other Boer leaders as the British Premier presented to Mr. Parnell when 
he turned himself and his party out of the House of Commons. The 
Transvaal Dutch saw that the policy of shaming England was a failure, 
and they determined to pursue another course. Their leaders, unlike the 
Irish chiefs, were equal to the emergency ; they showed themselves deserv- 
ing of liberty by embracing the only means by which it can be procured. 
True, it was risking their fortunes and their lives, and everything that 
men prize in this world, on the slender chances of success. It was for 
them either liberty or death. With the quiet determination and calm of 
the truly brave they faced the danger. 

It was no slight undertaking for a small republic with scarce one 
million souls to make war on a mighty empire. But the nation which 
hesitates is lost. There were none of the ranting speeches which some 
of the Irish leaders occasionally indulge in about these simple Dutch 
farmers. They knew the gravity and seriousness of what they had 
undertaken, and though they did not undervalue the danger, they did not 
shrink from the contest. 

On December 18 the Dutch farmers met in council to the number 
of about 5000 at Heidelberg and re-established the South African 
republic. 

The Boer people received the news of the re-establishing of a native 
government with ardor and with joy — joy tempered with the knowledge 
of the ordeal before them. But unlike Ireland's leaders, theirs were equal 
to the occasion, and prepared to make every sacrifice, even life itself, if 
necessary, to recover their stolen independence. On the contrary, the Irish 
Provincialist leaders are not willing to make such sacrifices, and are not 
courageous enough to face such risks. Some of them have made profit 
and emolument out of their country's misfortunes. Even the purest and 
most self-sacrificing think that a few months' imprisonment is martyrdom. 
They think that Britain's felon garb, which has been worn by so many 
noble patriots, is an indignity. When suffering for a nation was not con- 
sidered any disgrace Ireland had men prepared to dare or die ; their 
devotion to their country had no limits. The Irish people are taught 



35 2 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

that the men of to-day walk in the footsteps of Robert Emmet, Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald, and Theobald Wolfe Tone, those heroic spirits 
that faced the scaffold unflinchingly and gave up their lives for their 
country. The people rejoice with exceeding great joy when any of 
these amiable gentlemen emerge from jail after a short term of imprison- 
ment, for the petty Balfour sentences are not what Britain passes on her 
real enemies. These petty sentences are termed in the extravagant 
language of the agitators "dungeons, toils, and chains." 

The Boers elected three gentlemen to carry out their new programme, 
Messrs. Paul Kruger, Pretorius, and Joubert, which they called the 
"Triumvirate." The Boer triangle were men prepared to share every 
danger with the people, even death itself. They found the crusade of 
shame a crusade of folly, and issued a proclamation declaring their 
unalterable determination to live or die freemen. 

Their people were worthy of such leaders, and responded, saying : 
" We'll light now and never flee ; Englishmen shall be master no longer." 

The proclamation of the Boer Government in the name of the Volk- 
raad was signed by Kruger, Pretorius, and Joubert, expressing their 
desire to avoid war, but their determination to assert their independence. 

Colonel Lanyon, the English governor in Pretoria, issued a proclama- 
tion in reply, offering pardon to all who would immediately withdraw 
from the malcontent rebel camp. 

The Triumvirate sent the following to General Sir George P. Colley, 
the British High Commissioner in Natal : 

" South African Republic, 

" Heidelberg, December 20, 1880. 

" Sir : As we had the honor to inform you, the Government of the 
South African republic is restored and established at Heidelberg. 

"The proclamation setting forth our legal grounds, and fully explain- 
ing the fact that we have never been British subjects, and a conducting 
letter asking SirWm. Owen Lanyon for a peaceful surrender of our state 
to its legitimate founders and owners, were sent to his Excellency by our 
diplomatic envoy on Friday, the 17th. 

"The only answer it has pleased his Excellency to make to our 
legitimate demands was the sending of attached proclamation. . . 

" Whereas Sir W. Owen Lanyon seems now to incite us to war we 
appeal to you. The Lord be the judge between us and those who force 
us to take arms. . . "The Triumvirate." 

The following was sent to the neighboring Dutch republic : 

" To the President and People of the Free State ; 

" Honored Sir : We know that to your Honor and our sister republic 
we need not say one single word to awaken your interest in our posi- 
tion. . . 

" We stand before a dark future, but He in whose hands our lot is and 
who directs the hearts of kings shall provide. . . We trust in our sister 
republic, her citizens — sons with us of the same house. 

" The Triumvirate." 

How like Christian soldiers going into a serious struggle were the 
actions of these brave men ! They speak of the dark future before them. 
What a contrast to Irish agitators who tell their countrymen they are 
" victorious all along the line " because they make a few speeches, men 
who not only would not strike a blow for their country, but who denounce 
men who would do so ! 



THE BOERS DISCOVER A CRUSADE OF SHAME USELESS. 353 

The Boer proclamation was sent home to England and Mr. Glad- 
stone's answer in substance was, Shoot down the Boers; compel them to lay 
down their arms. He tried to place the brave Dutchmen in the disarmed 
condition in which he tries to keep Ireland. 

Mr. Gladstone is making promises to Ireland at this date, not one of 
which, as we believe in Eternal justice, does he mean to fulfill. Here is the 
same hypocrisy of language : speaking of the Boers and denouncing the 
Tories. Substitute Ireland and Balfour for the Transvaal and Beacons- 
field and the analogy will be complete. 

In November, 1879, Mr. Gladstone, speaking at Edinburgh, said : 
" The Conservatives have annexed the Transvaal territory, inhabited by a 
European, Christian, and republican community, which they have thought 
proper to bring within the limits of a monarchy, although out of 8000 
persons in the republic qualified to vote on the subject, 6500 protested 
against it. . ." 

Mr. Gladstone, speaking in the Free Church, Corstorphine, March, 
1880, said : " Our Prime Minister [Lord Beaconsfield] has a doctrine that 
the foreign policy of the Government that preceded his created for him 
the difficulties with which he has had to deal. He spoke of these diffi- 
culties in Europe and in Asia. He omitted Africa ; he did not say we had 
created for him any difficulties there. 

" But there he has contrived, without, so far as I am able to judge, the 
smallest necessity or excuse, to spend five millions of your money in 
invading a people who had done him no wrong ; and now he is obliged 
to spend more of your money in establishing the supremacy of the Queen 
over a community Protestant in religion, Hollanders in origin, vigorous, 
obstinate, and tenacious in character even as we ourselves — namely, the 
Dutchmen of the Transvaal." 

Except in English history there can be found no counterpart for this 
remarkable " Master of Misconception." 

The British press began to announce Boer outrages ; the murder (as 
it was termed) of several inoffensive Britons or British sympathizers was 
published, in the daily newspapers; the driver of a mail car it was stated 
was assassinated, and numerous similiar stories were placed before the 
public in the columns of the press. News came that at Potchefstroom 
while a Boer was hoisting the republican flag a British officer shot him 
in the arm ; the Briton was immediately shot down. 

The wicked Boers were now in their full career of " crime and outrage." 
It is sad to have to record such murderous violations of the Briton's 
sanctified laws. Were there among them no pious teachers such as the 
Irish have to expound to them the dogma of murder and to shudder at 
their bloodstained hands ? 

It is to be feared that these cruel men were not so advised, or if so 
they disregarded all these doctrines which Irishmen are taught by lay 
and cleric teachers to always respect : the sacred duty of humble obedi- 
ence and submission to British law. And to free their country, and dis- 
play Irish heroism, they are to remain quiet and peaceful, let the British 
murder and rob them as they may (possibly they have a special dis- 
pensation so to do). Irishmen's most powerful weapon is "passive 
resistance." 

Troops to re-enforce the general in command at Natal were hurried to 
the scene of disturbance. To suppress this " crime and outrage " and 
bring instead the blessings of " peace and order " infantry and cavalry 
were sent from India and the 97th Regiment from Gibraltar. The English 
press said that the Boer leaders were of two classes : First, the agitators 
who scoured the country and by absurd and outrageous stories misled 
those who knew no better ; and second, those who by severe threats 



354 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

intimidated the rest. These were lawless men who had never had any rule 
of life but their own selfish passions. 

" Boers advancing on Utrecht, causing great anxiety." " Commandeer- 
ing is going on in Derby and Utrecht." "All refusing to join will be 
shot " : such statements as these were put before the English people by 
their daily journals. It is one of Britain's standard opinions that all 
peoples who oppose her rule are forced by fear to do so. She says the 
same of Irishmen, who are only too eager to get the opportunity to attack 
her, without regard to personal risk of property or life. The following 
is one of these absurd statements: "At a meeting held in Utrecht 
yesterday, at which there were two rebel spies, seventy inhabitants were 
present, only nine of whom had the courage to declare themselves loyal, 
intimidation being part of the Boer tactics. The Buffalo River is 
patrolled by rebels. Major Clarke with twenty-five men has surrendered 
at Potchefstroom to the Boers after forty-eight hours' fighting. Colonel 
Winslow still holds the camp." 

In consequence of the open outbreak of hostilities the British Govern- 
ment had proclaimed martial law, and, in the language of the English 
correspondent, " was acting with commendable vigor." Then came the 
news " Mr. Paul Kruger is at Potchefstroom, having arrived there from 
Pretoria. Nearly all the inhabitants are prisoners. All the shops have 
been broken open, the contents being carried away in wagons by the 
Boers during the day. They employ the night firing at the fort. The fort 
is well fortified and provisioned. There are 2500 Boers at the Pretoria 
laager and in Potchefstroom." 

The Dutch farmers were now committed to the pathway so often 
derided in Ireland — namely, physical force. But their friends at home in 
Holland did not yet despair of success by peaceful means ; they tried to 
bring the public opinion of the world to bear upon the grand old Liberal 
statesman and the English people, and so shame them into compliance 
with their request. Professor P. Hartin of the University of Utrecht, 
Holland, drew up a monster petition addressed to Mr. Gladstone's Govern- 
ment and to the liberty-loving (?) English people. It was sent round for 
signatures and thousands of the most influential and leading men in 
Holland gladly affixed their signatures to this appeal. A portion of this 
petition was as follows : 

" It is with deep interest that we the undersigned Dutch citizens have 
followed the course of recent events concerning the people of the Trans- 
vaal, who are by descent our own flesh and blood, and we may not sup- 
press the feeling of amazement and regret which came upon us when the 
late Government of England resolved to deprive the people of the Trans- 
vaal of their national independence and incorporate their community 
with the British Crown. 

" Already many of yourselves, and notably your present Prime Minister, 
have issued their energetic protest against the Transvaal annexation as 
an act both unjust and impolitic. Yet did the people of the Transvaal 
cherish the hope, assumedly not quite unreasonably, that the wrong 
inflicted upon them would be ultimately redressed ; but now that all the 
expectation of this people has been baffled their patience at last has 
given way, and in despair have taken up arms. Much as we deplore this 
fact in itself, we are not at a loss to account for it. 

"We hope her Majesty's Ministers will undo an act of illiberality which 
a Cabinet of kind liberal sentiments would never have approved or carried out." 

Professor Hartin and his friends were most energetic in bringing every 
possible influence to bear upon the Liberal Mr. Gladstone. In this they 



THE BOERS DISCOVER A CRUSADE OF SHAME USELESS. 355 

were ably assisted by the few genuine Liberals which England can boast 
of — Mr. Joseph Cowen, ever forward in the noble work of freedom ; 
Mr. Labouchere, at that time the persistent and genuine friend of 
Ireland, and no slavish follower of the " Grand Old Man " ; Mr. Rylands, 
and other gentlemen — but all to no avail. The Liberal Premier was inexo- 
rable ; he was determined to pursue the pathway of blood in the Transvaal 
as well as in Ireland. The Holland gentlemen who came to London were 
astounded and disgusted ; they pronounced Mr. Gladstone the giant 
hypocrite of the nineteenth century. They returned to Holland dejected 
that their noble mission was rendered abortive by the very man who 
could use in opposition such apparently genuine philanthropic sentiments. 
Cant ! noble Hollanders, all pure British cant ! When Mr. Gladstone was 
stumping England recently talking of Irish Home Rule one nation he did 
not deceive — the honest, sturdy Dutchmen of Holland. 

The London Times, commenting on the state of affairs in the Trans- 
vaal, said : 

" There is, we fear, too much reason to think that the disaffection of 
the Boers is general, and that their temper is such as to extinguish the 
possibility of dealing with them by other than stern methods." 

The London " thunder organ," that reflects the opinions of the valiant 
British race, was howling for Boer blood to quaff as a change of liquids 
from the long drinks of the Irishman's life stream it was wont to indulge in. 

The headquarters and two companies of the 94th Regiment escorting 
thirty-four wagons, under the command of Colonel Anstruther of that 
regiment, left Lydenburg to re-enforce the British garrison of Pretoria, 
the Transvaal capital. Two of the train of wagons were loaded with 
Martini-Henry rifle cartridges. Before their arrival at Middleton thirty 
additional rounds of cartridges were served out to the troops. 

After crossing the Oliphant River the colonel gave orders that every 
man was to sleep with his rifle beside him. A " laager " was formed every 
night with the wagons, and " lights out " at 9.15 p. m. On December 20 
at midday they were marching en route with band playing and colors 
flying as they so often do in Ireland. The colonel and another officer 
were riding in advance at the head of the column. The officer who was 
with the colonel was Alfred Egerton, the transport master. They were 
about to select a camping ground about 1^ miles from Bronker's Sprint 
(38 miles from Pretoria) when the band suddenly ceased playing. The 
colonel turned round to ascertain the reason, when he saw 150 Boers on 
the left of the road in formation, ten paces between each horse, and all 
mounted. The Boers were about 500 yards from the British column and 
on the left flank. The colonel galloped back and gave the word to halt. 
The rear wagon with the men then closed ranks; orders were issued for 
the band wagon to draw up and the bandsmen (40) got their rifles. 

A flag of truce came from the Boers and an officer rode out to meet 
it. The messenger gave the Briton a letter, which he handed to the colo- 
nel. The letter was in English. Its purport was as follows : The 
republic having been declared at Heidelberg, and the Dutch people being 
determined to maintain it, any movements of the English troops were 
prejudicial to their interest, and if the column advanced beyond the 
Sprint they should consider it a declaration of war, and the colonel must 
be responsible for the consequences. The messenger said verbally that 
hvo minutes were allowed for the colonel's decision. Colonel Anstruther 
replied that his orders were to march to Pretoria and he should go there. 

Each party galloped back to his own force. As the Boers reached their 
column they commenced the engagement. The Boer troops were extended 
in skirmishing order in front of the wagons. The British officers all fell 
either killed or mortally wounded in the first ten minutes. The British 



35 6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

soldiers kept up a steady fire, but they were falling fast under the volleys 
of the unerring Boer marksmen. Adjutant Harrison shouted for the men 
to keep up the fire, when a bullet struck him in the forehead. The Boer 
fire was principally directed on the officers, oxen, and ammunition wagons. 

When Colonel Anstruther saw that the officers were shot and the men 
falling fast, and that there was no chance of success, he ordered the 
bugle to sound cease firing. He was badly wounded and said he had 
better leave a few men to tell the tale. He ordered his men to throw up 
their helmets in token of surrender. The British lost 130 killed and 
wounded, and the remainder of the 94th Regiment were immediately 
disarmed and made prisoners, the Boers taking off the ammunition 
wagons. P. J. Joubert was in command of the Boer troops. When the 
news of this British defeat reached Natal and the Cape it was cabled to 
England. Rage and indignation filled the British breast, and the general 
in command at Natal, who was hurrying to the front with all the forces 
he could collect, was ordered to severely chastise the insolent rebel Boers. 

The Cape Times, a Colonial English organ, commenting on the situa- 
tion, said : 

" A more determined, a more reckless, a more mad revolt cannot be 
conceived. Can any more mad folly be imagined than an effort to wrest 
independence from England by starving out small garrisons and pounc- 
ing upon small bodies of unsuspecting soldiers ? How can the destruc- 
tion of the 94th Regiment help to restore the republic ? If after a stub- 
born siege and a defense as gallant as that of Lucknow Colonel Bellairs 
and his brave garrison succumbed, does Mr. Kruger think that he has 
advanced the possibility of a republic in the Transvaal? If he does 
think so he must extend the horizon of the republic so as to embrace 
the whole of South Africa. If his game is an extensive conspiracy to lay 
the foundation of the United States of South Africa he has gone the 
right way to work to challenge the power of England, and he will find that 
the greater the issue the more determined will England be. The only 
immediate alarm we have is for those brave fellows who will hold their 
forts in the face of death by fire and starvation. How they are to be 
relieved we fail to discover, but that the relievers will come with all the 
speed which the power and wealth of the empire can command we are 
certain. Since Paul Kruger has appealed to force to hoist the standard 
of South African republicanism, he will have to prove the justness of his claim 
by bloodshed and in civil war, that after all means murder ! " 

Thus spoke the true Anglo-Saxon. Well the Boers knew they would 
have to assert their independence by bloodshed, and they were determined 
to pursue these " murders," as the English paper called them. When 
Irishmen are equally determined to so " murder," they will show them- 
selves earnest like the Boers, and will by bloodshed have commenced the 
only course practical to obtain self-government. 

At length the main forces of the British in South Africa and the Boer 
patriot army met in mortal combat. The Boers had occupied a strong 
position at Laing's Nek to dispute the passage of the British troops. 
The Boers were under the command of General Joubert, and the British 
were commanded by General Sir George Pomeroy Colley, a brave and 
able soldier, who was commander-in-chief of her Britannic Majesty's 
forces in South Africa. The battle was fought on Friday, January 28, 
1881. The Boers were strongly intrenched at and beyond Laings Nek, 
where they occupied a house and cattle kraal, from which they were 
shelled early in the day. Laings Nek is the most difficult point on the 
road from Newcastle to the Transvaal. At nine o'clock the British guns 
and the rocket batteries advanced within range. The guns were ranged 
on the right and the rockets on the left of the road to the Nek. The 



THE BOERS DISCOVER A CRUSADE OF SHAME USELESS. 357 

Nek was shelled for one hour. When there was little sign of the Boers 
a mounted squadron of seventy men was ordered by the British general ' 
to carry the heights on the extreme right. Under Major Brownlow and 
Captain Hornby they rode close up to the kopje, and in about five 
seconds half of their saddles were empty. Troop Sergeant-Major 
Lunney actually got into the Boer trenches, but there was shot dead by 
half a dozen rifles. The decimated squadron then retired, reformed, and 
charged again up the hill ; but nothing could live under the fire they met, 
and they fell back with the loss of more than half their number killed 
and wounded ; thirty-two horses were killed. By the time the cavalry 
were in retreat the 58th Regiment under Colonel Deane was ordered to 
attack. The first rush up the incline made the men blow hard, the grass 
being long and the ground wet. After a few minutes' rest they went 
on to a slight ridge between them and the goal. No sooner were their 
heads seen above the ridge, before they had time to deploy, and while 
they were rather crowded together, than the front companies received 
a terrific volley and were also enfiladed on the right flank. After about 
five minutes under this fire the British wavered, broke, and fled, each 
man trying to protect himself as best he could. Reforming the regiment, 
Colonel Deane ordered them to fix bayonets and charge. Led on by 
the colonel, they renewed the attack immediately. Colonel Deane's 
horse was shot under him and he fell. Springing to his feet, he reassured 
his men by shouting, " I am all right." The words were hardly uttered 
when he fell mortally wounded. Major Hingeston, who with the other 
officers kept to the front cheering on his men in the desperate task 
before them, then took command and ordered the charge. He was 
instantly shot down and soon after died. The Boers at this time kept 
well in the trenches. The British lay down on the ground, taking a shot 
when an opponent appeared, but when they rose to charge the fire poured 
in upon them was most terrible. Before the final charge the British were 
lying down within twenty yards of the Boer trenches. Major Poole, 
Captain Longman, and Lieutenant Dolphin were shot down. The regi- 
ment was nearly wiped out of existence. Sub-Lieutenant Jopp took the 
remnant of the 58th Regiment out of action. The British were com- 
pletely defeated, and the brave Boers were in victorious possession of 
the field. 

General Colley after the fight addressed the troops, declaring it was 
his intention to hold the camp until re-enforced. The British camp was 
strongly intrenched with a fort at each corner, well supplied with artillery 
and rocket batteries, while the Boer army was altogether composed of 
mounted infantry, they having no artillery during the whole campaign. 
The British loss in the battle of Laing's Nek, was 334 killed and wounded. 
They suffered a great proportionate loss of officers, who were nearly all 
killed. The Boer loss was only fourteen killed and wounded, owing to 
the tactics they used, fighting under cover. 

Paul Kruger, writing to President Brandt of the Orange Free State, 
said : " Whether we win or lose, the outcome of our fight will be freedom 
in South Africa such as is enjoyed in America. Then it will be from 
Zambesi to Simon's Bay. Africa for Africanders ! " 

You are right, brave and gallant Dutchman. Exactly as Washington 
freed America by killing the English enemy so must you win, and by no 
other means. This idea of talking the enemy out of the country is arrant 
folly. As well order the moon to refuse to give her light. When Irish- 
men are determined to pursue this course of killing off the British they 
may hope to say with some show of success, Ireland for Irishmen, but 
not till then. This fact is absolutely certain. It is the stern lesson 
which history teaches in every age and generation. Blind folly of that 



358 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLKS. 

agitator-ridden people to follow any other road to freedom but that 
which the Boers pursued. How can they be deluded with this mockery, 
this sham called " moral suasion " ? 

The following dispatch was sent by the Boer general to President 
Paul Kruger giving an account of the battle of Laing's Nek : 

Headquarters, January 28, 1881. 
" To Mr. Paul Kruger, President. 

" Sir : As I mentioned in my last, I expected an attack at any moment, 
and so it occurred. This morning about seven o'clock we were attacked 
in our positions, and after about thirty shells had been fired over our men 
their mounted troopers (blue coats) received orders to forward. They 
came so close that the powder burnt each other. Though their line was 
not great, they had to retreat. But then the infantry (red coats) showed 
and came so near that the dead on both sides fell in among each 
other. One of the officers even fired in among our men with a revolver 
before he was shot, but then the Lord helped us. There being so few 
men in the field, the re-enforcements I sent hither arrived just in time to 
assist, so that they the English charge (red coats) had also to retreat. We 
had a severe fight. The opposition from the English cannon was too 
great. We suffered heavily, we had some of our best men disabled. On the 
side of the enemy there lay ninety-eight dead. A great number of wounded 
had been carried off before we reached there. Those who had been 
removed were all wounded. I hear the English lost several hundred 
men. "P. J. Joubert." 

Great pressure was brought to bear on Mr. Gladstone to make peace 
after the battle of Laing's Nek, but of no avail; the" Grand Old Man " would 
have more bloodshed. Mr. Labouchere asked in the House of Commons 
if the Boers would be recognized as belligerents. The Right Honorable 
M. E. G. Duff, Mr. Gladstone's Under-Secretary for Colonial Affairs, 
replied. He said that the operations would be carried on with every 
regard to humanity ; that nothing was known requiring or justifying the 
•consideration of the question of belligerent rights. 

Most liberal of Liberal English governments, you would not accord 
to the Boers belligerent rights. No, they were rebels, assassins, and mur- 
derers, like the Irish, and when captured you wanted to give yourselves 
•the happiness of hanging Mr. Kruger, Mr. Joubert, and the rest. What an 
insatiate thirst for blood animates your very liberal British souls ! 

Mr. Rylands, an honest Liberal, brought a motion into the House of 
Commons that the annexation of the Transvaal was impolitic and 
unprofitable. Premier Gladstone said it was the resolute intention 
■of the Government to establish British authority in the Transvaal, so the 
*' Grand Old Liberal " and his following defeated Mr. Rylands' motion ; it 
was rejected by 129 to 33 votes. Mr. Gladstone's resolute intention he 
tried to put into practice, and the groans of the wounded and the dying 
ihad no effect on this man of promises, this aged English Minister. 
'General Colley, in his address to the troops after the battle of Laing's 
Nek, said ; 

" The stain cast upon our arms must be quickly effaced and the rebel- 
lion must be put down. The major-general trusts that officers and men 
will not allow the soldierly spirit which prompts them to gallant action to 
degenerate into a spirit of revenge. The task now forced upon me by 
the improved action of the Boers is a painful one in any circumstance, 
and I call on all ranks to assist me in my endeavors to mitigate the suffer- 
ings it must entail. We must be careful to avoid punishing the innocent 
for the guilty, and we must remember that, though misled and deluded, 



THE BOERS DISCOVER A CRUSADE OF SHAME USELESS. 359 

the Boers are in the main a brave and high-spirited people, and are 
actuated by feelings that are entitled to respect." 

The general evidently feared the soldiery would lapse into license 
and cruelty over a fallen foe when that enemy bore the opprobrious title of 
rebel. Ireland has been the scene sooften'of these wanton excesses that 
Irishmen know full well what Sir George Colley feared. This address in 
the concluding portion does credit to the unfortunate general, who lost 
his life in the campaign. 

It was stated that England had requested permission for British troops 
to pass through the Portuguese town of Lorenza Marquiz at the north 
side of Delagoa Bay, Africa. A Portuguese officer commenting on this 
said : 

"If the news that England has requested Portugal to allow British 
troops to pass through Portuguese territory to the Transvaal is correct 
the Government must consult the Cortes, as the treaty bearing on that 
subject has not yet been ratified. As the Dutch Government thinks the 
Boers ought to be considered belligerents by the powers, Portugal, being 
a neutral state, is in a difficult position." 

The Portuguese with their great interests in South Africa were by no 
means inclined to indorse the career of the rapacious Briton in the Trans- 
vaal. The gallant manner in which the Boers were defending their liber- 
ties was making for them powerful friends, which no nation can ever 
procure by a mere crusade of shame such as Mr. Parnell preached. 

The British general was heavily re-enforced, and in trying to escort 
into his camp a train of supplies was again attacked and beaten by the 
Boers at the battle of Ingogo. 

The Boers attacked in loose formation on horseback. When the 
British artillery commenced shelling them, on a shell taking effect among 
them at about fifteen hundred yards' distance, they rode off, and having 
dismounted under cover behind the hills, opened fire. From twelve 
o'clock until dusk it was a rifle duel under cover. The British guns from 
time to time took part in it, but the Boer fire was so severe that it was 
impossible to work the guns continually, the men falling almost as soon 
as they stood up, with the sole exception of Lieutenant Pierson of the 
battery, who was wounded later in the day. 

Every officer, driver, gunner, and horse in the battery was hit. 
Shortly after the action had begun the British guns were completely silenced 
for an hour. Some of the infantry then assisted. One piece was thus 
kept in action throughout the day, but it was a dangerous duty, and those 
serving it had to be continually replaced. The guns were actually whit- 
ened all over with marks of bullets, and for anybody to stand up beside 
them was certain death. The Boers occasionally crept up to within two 
hundred yards of the British line, but never attempted a rush. The 
greater portion of the fighting was at a distance of six or seven hundred 
yards. 

General Colley, completely defeated, only succeeded in escaping back 
to camp under cover of darkness because the Boers, who had drawn off 
with the intention of renewing the attack in the morning, believed the 
river to be not fordable. The British general was obliged to leave all his 
wounded on the field and make good his retreat. It was feared that 
General Colley would be compelled to surrender. The wounded at the 
battle of Ingogo lay on the ground all night suffering fearful agonies. 

The martial spirit engendered by success now animated the Dutchmen 
of the Transvaal. They sang their war song with great joy. The words 
would well suit the Irish people, but under their present leaders they would 
be taught only to sing it j for them to dare to think of acting as did the 
brave Boers, would be to violate their lauded stand of patience and for- 



360 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

bearance. And their pious, goody-goody friends would say ; " Violence ! 
outrage ! murder ! " and they would put to the Irish this question, in 
harmony and consonance with their opinions: " Irishmen, are you becom- 
ing a nation of assassins?" Then the good people would rebuke the 
wicked ones, and the island would lapse back to its normal condition — 
the island of saints and beggars. 

BOER WAR SONG. 

Hands off ! Stand back ! Leave us alone ! 
You shall not rob us of our own ! 
We will be free ! We will be free ! 
God and right shall our standard be. 

Our fathers' sweat and our fathers' blood 
Have soaked the ground on which they stood ; 
Our mothers' tears, our mothers' toil 
Have hallowed our blest Afric's soil. 

This is our land ! This is our land ! 
Reclaimed by our good fathers' hand ; 
Reclaimed by them, we claim it now 
As a garden made by the peasant's plow. 

We ask but what to us was left, 
Nor shall it from our grasp be reft — 
For Fatherland and freedom we will die 
Or live victoriously. 

But the time was approaching when even Mr. Gladstone would be 
compelled to face the Boer question, and surrender to the doctrine of 
force what he positively refused to the crusade of shame. He is not 
the only English Minister who has been compelled, by the possibility of 
danger to British interests, to surrender what he never would to oceans 
of talk or mountains of reason. Britain's greatest interest is peace ; 
every British Minister knows how bombastic and theatrical is the fancied 
power of the United Kingdom, for the word empire is a source of weak- 
ness, not strength, in case of war. It is the island of Britain, and Britain 
alone, that must bear the strain of war ; the empire would scarcely more 
than contribute a battalion or two, which might be raised by British sen- 
timentalists in the colonies, but for any material aid Britain knows full 
well she cannot count on it. On the contrary, her navy would be dis- 
tracted from its British duties by having to protect possessions that must 
be defended, and cannot aid the so-called Imperial Ministers in London. 
In the face of a war with any European power Britain is a pygmy ; her 
boasted strength consists in her wealth, which would be a prize for her 
despoiler. Without a European combination to protect her interests — for 
she only lives on high-sounding phrases and sufferance — she would 
collapse as easily as a bandbox. To insure this peace, which means for 
her national existence, she will make almost any sacrifice. By the pres- 
tige of her wealth, and the false impression some people have of her 
military strength, she has succeeded in preserving a bold front of great- 
ness before the world. Bluster as she may— and she did this very loudly 
under Lord Beaconsfield's Government — her Ministers know her weak- 
ness. Even this great Tory statesman was compelled to succumb to 
Russia when he could get no allies ; without allies England can only 
fight barbarous or semi-barbarous nationalities, or else poverty-cursed and 
agitator-cursed, disarmed Ireland. Beaconsfield, after calling out his 
puny reserves and asking for millions of money — of which he could get 
plenty — was, after all his public buncombe, compelled to eat humble pie, 
and sign a secret treaty with the Russian diplomat Count Schouvaloff, 



THE BOERS DISCOVER A CRUSADE OF SHAME USELESS. 3 6t 

giving away every point he contended for in Lord Salisbury's circular. 
This circular was simply a bid to the nations of Europe, letting them 
know that the nation of money-bags, filled to repletion by usury and 
plunder, but without soldierly spirit in the masses of her people, was in the 
market seeking an alliance with some country who had enough of soldiers 
to do her fighting. The offer not being accepted, Beaconsfield was com- 
pelled surrender to Russia, for he could no more fight her single-handed to 
than a small boy could a giant pugilist. Hence peace is not only what is 
called a blessing to Britain, but the very means by which she exists. That 
this state of things cannot last always is one hope to her enemies, — and 
Britain has made many, — and they look with hope for the near approach of 
the time when the great Northern Colossus will stick a pin into the huge 
bladder called the British Empire and make it collapse. The Boers by 
their manly attitude were gaining friends in Europe — not that sort of 
"public sentiment " which Mr. Parnell was trying to gain for Ireland, 
but the possibility of material help. Nations will never help a country 
that displays no more national life than howling forth her miseries, and 
this is the condition of Ireland under the crusaders of shame. 

What proved to be England's " Waterloo " in the Transvaal soon took 
place — an engagement which covered the Boers with glory and England 
with discomfiture ; which proved that the Dutchmen of the Transvaal were 
possessed of those qualities which make great soldiers : daring, persever- 
ance, and cool courage ; a fight which placed beside General Wolseley's 
boast is the satire of history. Even mighty England was compelled to 
retract her High Commissioner's words. The " great and only " boasted 
that the sun would forget to shine and the Vaal River would run backward 
before the British flag should cease to fly over Transvaal territory. 

General Sir Evelyn Wood of Zulu fame was appointed to take com- 
mand in the Transvaal, and re-enforcements had arrived to strengthen 
Sir George Colley's camp before Laing's Nek. Another great English 
general was on his way out from Britain to take command of her Maj- 
esty's forces in South Africa. Strange to say, this English general was 
an Irishman, and at that time very popular in Britain: Sir Frederick Rob- 
erts bade fair to become a dangerous rival to Sir Garnet Wolseley. He 
was the British officer who commanded in Afghanistan, and who after the 
defeat of the Afghans and the glutting of English vengeance on the mur- 
derers (?) of the British resident in Cabul, made the famous forced march 
to rescue the British who had suffered defeat at the hands of the Afghan 
prince, Ayoub Khan. General Roberts returned to England to be crowned 
with bays, and his Alma Mater, Trinity College, Dublin, presented him 
with a banquet and sword of honor. At this banquet the guest of the 
evening, with the true instincts of a soldier, wished to place the honor of 
this great and successful march upon the shoulders of his command. He 
spoke especially of the short-service system, which had transformed the 
British Army into an organization of boys. He said he could never have 
been successful in making the march from Cabul to Candahar but that 
the men he commanded were veteran troops. He particularly specified 
the 92d Gordon Highlanders and the 2d Battalion of the 60th Rifles. 
These veteran regiments, composed of men some of whom had re-enlisted 
for the third time, were sent to South Africa, and had just recently joined 
the British camp before Laing's Nek. Their arrival gladdened the heart 
of the general in command, Sir George Colley. Knowing that Sir Evelyn 
Wood was on the way up to the front, and that Sir Frederick Roberts 
was on the sea to take the supreme command, he thought he would 
imitate Lord Chelmsford and have a crowning and successful engagement 
with the Boers before the arrival of either general. By some incompre- 
hensible oversight of the Boers, Majila or Majuba Hill, which completely 



362 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

commanded their camp, was left by them unoccupied at night. Sir George 
Colley was soon informed of this by his scouts, so he determined to 
secretly occupy the hill. Secret movements are necessary both in warfare 
and in diplomacy, though some of Ireland's teachers keep telling the 
people of the great crime of belonging to any movement which does not 
tell the public and the British enemy what it is doing or about to do. 
The account of this celebrated fight is from the pen of an eyewitness : 

" Our destination was kept a profound secret until the moment of 
starting. What was known as the high hill on the left of the Nek was 
our destination. Crowning it a high ridge connected both the hills. 
We started with the following forces : Two companies of the 58th Regi- 
ment, two companies of the 92d Gordon Highlanders, two companies 
of the 60th Rifles, and one Gatling gun. We left one company of Rifles 
at a precipitous part of the ridge ; one company of Highlanders remained 
intrenched at the base of the hill, and with them all the horses were left. 
Guided by Kaffirs, we toiled up the hill, which was so steep at places that 
the men had to crawl on their hands and knees. Other parts were up 
dongas and over bowlders. We went in single file only. By day men 
might have shrunk from the ascent. We reached the crest before dawn 
and found it hollowed out. 

" Our occupation of the hill rendered the Boer position absolutely 
untenable, as we took their whole intrenchments in reverse of our own 
camp. Although miles away, it looked quite close, for we were at an ele- 
vation of 2500 feet above it. The enemy's principal laager was about 
2000 yards away. The position we had secured was undoubtedly one of 
immense natural strength. On the summit was a plateau, so that all the 
troops not actually engaged in repelling assaults could lie down perfectly 
secure from fire below. For an hour the greater part of the troops 
rested ; a portion, however, helped the sailors, who had not so far been 
able to get the Gatling gun up the hill. 

" At sunrise the Boers were seen rising in their lines, but it was not 
until nearly an hour that a party of mounted videttes were seen trotting 
out toward the hill, upon which they evidently intended to take their 
stand. As they approached our outlying pickets fired upon them, and 
our presence was then for the first time discovered. The sound of our 
guns was heard at the Dutch laager and the whole scene changed as if by 
magic. In place of a few scattered figures there appeared on the scene 
swarms of men, rushing hither and thither. Some rushed to their horses 
and others to their wagons ; and work on yoking the oxen and preparing 
for instant retreat began at once. When the first panic had abated it 
could be seen that some person in authority had taken the command. 

" The greater number of the Boers began to move forward with the 
evident intention of attacking us ; but the work of preparing for retreat 
in case of necessity still went on, and continued until all the wagons 
were inspanned and ready to move away. Some indeed at once began 
to withdraw. About seven o'clock the Boers opened fire and the bullets 
whistled thickly over the plateau. The men were all perfectly cool and 
confident. I do not think the possibility of the position being carried by 
storm occurred to anyone. From seven to eleven o'clock the Boers, who 
were lying all around the hill, maintained a constant fire. 

" The Boers' shooting was wonderfully accurate ; the stones behind 
which our men in the front line were lying were hit by almost every shot. 
Opposed to such shooting as this there was no need to impress upon the 
men to keep well under cover. They only showed themselves to take an 
occasional shot, and accurate as was the enemy's shooting, up to eleven 
o'clock we had but five casualties. 



THE BOERS DISCOVER A CRUSADE OF SHAME USELESS. 3 6 3 

" Commander Romilly was dangerously wounded as he was standing 
close to General Colley. Twenty men of the 92d, all veterans, under 
Lieutenant Hamilton held the point which was most honored by the Boers. 
Nothing could exceed the steadiness of these Highlanders. They kept 
well under cover, and although they fired but seldom, they killed eight or 
ten of the Boers who showed themselves from behind cover. So far our 
position seemed perfectly safe. The Boers had indeed got between us 
and the camp ; but we had three days' provisions and could hold out until 
re-enforcements came up. 

" Their position was not more than 3000 yards from the Nek. I esti- 
mate there were 1000 Boers around the hill ; they kept up an incessant 
fire of fifty shots per minute. 

" There are three sides of this mountain which the Boers could not 
climb ; it runs north-northeast and south-southwest. 

" The Boer losses were certainly heavier than ours. How they came 
to leave this position undefended by night I cannot imagine. 

" Our casualties, with the exception of that of Commander Romilly, 
were few and unimportant, and all were perfectly confident of the result. 
From eleven to twelve o'clock the enemy's fire continued as hot but as 
harmless as before. Between twelve and one it slackened and it seemed 
as if the Boers were drawing off. This, however, was not the case. The 
enemy had been, as was afterward learned, very strongly re-enforcing 
their fighting line in preparation for an assault. 

" Shortly after one o'clock a terrific fire broke forth from the right 
lower slopes of the hill, the side on which firing had all along been heaviest. 
A tremenduous rush was simultaneously made by the enemy. Our 
advanced line was at once nearly all shot or driven back upon our main 
position. This position may be described as an oblong basin on the 
top of the hill. It was about two hundred yards long by about fifty broad. 

" In vain our men tried to withstand that shower of lead. They 
wavered and were rallied, wavered again and ran on the main position in 
a general sauve qui pent. 

" The officers shouted : ' Rally on your right,' which would bring them 
to the left rear near the general. They did rally and came to the crest of 
the hill where Colonel Stewart, Major Frazer, Captain McGregor, staff 
officers, and every officer present with revolver and sword in hand were 
encouraging the men by word and action. The whole Boer fire was con- 
centrated on the last point of defense. 

" Major Frazer sang out : ' Men of the 92d, don't forget your bayonets.' 
General Colley was directing the movement. The men fixed bayonets, 
and standing shoulder to shoulder, poured a volley back for each of the 
enemy's volleys. 

" The Boers with shouts of triumph swarmed up the sides of the hill, 
and made several desperate attempts to carry the position with a rush. 
Each time, however, they were driven back without the basin. 

" After each charge the firing, which nearly ceased during the mtte'e, 
broke out with renewed violence, and the air above us seemed alive with 
bullets. The troops did their duty well and steadily, and trying as was 
the occasion, fought with great coolness, encouraged by their officers. 

"At last the Boers, who had gathered near the edge of the slope, made 
a tremendous rush at a point beyond that at which they had before been 
attacking, and where the number of defenders was comparatively small. 
They burst through the defenders and poured in over the edge of the 
basin, and our position was lost. 

" The main line of our defenders, their flank turned and taken in re- 
verse, made a rush along the plateau to endeavor to form and rally, but it was 
useless. With fierce shouts and a storm of bullets the Boers poured in. 



364 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

"There was a wild rush, with the Boers close behind. The roar of 
the firing, the whistling of the bullets, and the yells of the enemy made 
up a din which seemed infernal. All around men were falling. There 
was no resistance, no halt. It was a flight for life. At this moment I 
was knocked down by the rush and trampled upon, and when I came to 
my senses the Boers were firing over me at the retiring troops who 
were moving down the hill. Trying to rise, I was taken prisoner and 
led away. On the hill I found the body of General Colley, shot through 
the head. 

" Talking with me the Boers ascribed their victories not to their arms 
or bravery, but to the righteousness of their cause. 

"As to the completeness of this victory there can be no question. 
They carried by sheer fighting a position which our general considered 
to be, defended by the force at our command, impregnable. 

" Even now I can hardly understand how it was done, so sudden was 
the rush, so instantaneous the change from what we regarded as perfect 
safety to imminent peril. Up to the moment when the Boers made the 
rush they had effected no progress whatever. A few only of our men 
had been engaged. 

" The Boer casualties were trifling in the extreme. A few minutes 
later they held the crest of the hill, and our men were defending the 
natural basin in which they had been lying in apparent security. It 
cannot be denied that the capture of Majuba Hill is an exploit of which 
any troops in the world might be proud." 

The greater portion of this description of the fight at Majuba Hill was 
written by Mr. Cameron of the London Standard, afterward killed in the 
Soudan while acting as war correspondent attached to Wolseley's expedi- 
tion against the Arabs of Khartoum. The Standard, commenting on his 
account of the battle, said : 

" This simple but graphic narrative at once disposes of all reports tele- 
graphed from Newcastle and Durban to the effect that the loss at Majuba 
Hill was due to the failure of the ammunition of our troops. 

" It is clear that not only was there no failure whatever, but that a 
great proportion of our troops had never drawn trigger until they found 
themselves engaged in almost hand to hand conflict with the enemy." 

Another writer thus describes the finding of the body of the British 
commander-in-chief : 

" The Boer commander gave me a pass to the camp. . . He said, 
1 Who is the officer killed ? ' I said, ' Take me to him ? ' We went to 
where the final stand was taken, and there lay a body covered by the 
helmet. By the clothing I recognized the body, and lifting the helmet, 
saw the face of our poor general. The Boer doubted me and questioned 
me again and again as to whether it was really the general. I gave my 
word of honor it was really General Colley." 

Mr. Cameron thus criticises the movements in the fight : 

" During the enemy's advance our men hardly caught sight of a single 
Boer. The Boers crept through the grass, taking advantage of every 
stone and every inequality in the ground. When driven back by our fire 
at one point they would work around unperceived and thence open with 
heavy volleys upon us, themselves being all the time invisible." 

There are Irishmen who would describe these tactics of the Boers as 
not honorable warfare. To attack an enemy creeping through the grass 
and remaining all the time themselves invisible would horrify these gallant 
and pious Irishmen, who think war (or killing) should be carried on always 
not only out in the open, but with sound of drum and trumpet. Alas ! 



THE BOERS DISCOVER A CRUSADE OF SHAME USELESS. 3 6 5 

for the days of chivalry ! Mr. Cameron thus speaks of the British 
soldiers : 

" The English would have done well to have trusted to the bayonet 
instead of flying down the hill, where they were quickly shot down like 
rabbits. 

" One lesson taught us is that it is useless to attempt to fight the 
Boers with numerically inferior forces. In such warfare they are man 
for man equal and more than equal to our own. They are as courageous, 
infinitely better shots, and are marvelously skilled, taking advantage of 
every cover. Their coolness under fire is perfect. While fighting indi- 
vidually all work in concert and obedience to orders." 

For the first time since Waterloo the much boasted of British troops 
met and fought a white race single handed. Unfortunately for them 
they had no French, Turk, or Sardinian to help them as in the Crimea, 
and the consequence was defeat and disaster. Had the Boers yielded to 
the promises of Mr. Gladstone and surrendered their arms they would 
have found themselves an enslaved people like the Irish, and in another 
generation no British correspondent could speak of them as excellent 
marksmen, for, like the Irish, they would be deprived of the use of 
weapons, in so far as British law could be enforced in either country. 

The battle of Majuba Hill increased the admiration of other nations 
for the brave Dutchmen who so nobly defended their independence, and 
unofficial rumors of this sympathy taking practical shape reached Down- 
ing Street. The Orange Free State could no longer be kept out of the 
way, and this republic, much more thickly populated than the Transvaal, 
would have given England additional trouble, and might endanger that 
greatly prized necessity for the ruler of the waves — peace. Mr. Glad- 
stone therefore said to the Boers in the language of Macbeth : " Get thee 
gone ; my soul is charged with blood enough of thine already." 

General Wood concluded an armistice with the Boer commander, and 
after a little preliminaries of peace were arranged, which restored to 
the gallant Dutch of the Transvaal the government of their country. 
Britain recognized the South African republic. 

If it was right for Mr. Gladstone to withdraw his troops from the 
Transvaal after the battle of Majuba Hill, was it not, then, equally as just 
before this horrible bloodshed ? This Minister is directly responsible for 
this cruel war. His career during the five years he held office was one 
trail of blood ; he is responsible for the British lives lost in the Transvaal, 
for the agony and suffering of the English wounded, lying on the battle- 
field on the night after the battle of Ingogo, writhing in pain and torture, 
that Mr. Gladstone's principles should be sustained — principles which in 
his hypocrisy he condemned in his Tory predecessors. 

Mr. Gladstone can have no excuse that the war was hurried upon 
him. Professor Hartin's petition he rejected, and while temporizing 
with the Holland deputation he sent out more troops to suppress the 
Boer rising. While speaking false words of peace he was pursuing 
bloody war. Every attempt at mediation was tried, every attempt at 
peaceful solution exhausted, by the Boers before they took up arms. 

In Ireland his career was marked by the bayonet, buckshot, and the 
gallows ; he is as directly responsible for the death of England's two 
Secretaries as if he himself struck the blow. His intolerable tyranny left 
no course open to even the most abject and servile of races but to strike 
back again. 

He carried out this career of bloodshed in the Soudan. General 
Hicks' army was massacred by a brave uncivilized race whose country he 
was bent on despoiling. The men of his own country who fell beneath 
the Arabs' spears, their deaths were the direct outcome of Mr. Gladstone's 



$66 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

aggression. General Gordon, Colonel Stewart, Mr. Cameron, the war 
correspondent who was at Majuba Hill, and all the brave fellows who 
were killed in this mission of plunder into the Soudan — their deaths were 
the direct result of his false policy. 

Let him plead English interests if he will. He should carry out no 
such highwayman robberies. As a Christian man, which in plausible 
language he poses to be, he should not lend himself to carry out such a 
villainous policy of ruined homes and wrecked lives, which have been the 
outcome of his Irish government. 

The Irish people are listening to this man's honeyed words at this date, 
forgetting all his past cruelties. Does he still wear the mask of hypocrisy, 
and is his present appearance of angelic goodness before humanity but 
another attempt to deceive? Irishmen who know this Minister's past 
public life have much reason to be skeptical. When returned to power 
will he perform his promises by giving to Ireland that home rule which 
Canada now enjoys without any reservation, drawback, or exception ? — 
not the deceptive bill of 1886 ; let that lie buried with the mountain of 
falsehood which gave it birth. 

In the words of the Boers, Irish Nationalists address the British 
people :" Hands off ! Stand back ! Leave us alone ! " We do not want 
their laws or their Government ; we want to manage our own household. 
At present Ireland is trying to live up to the words of the Chicago Con- 
vention of 1886 : " Peacefully if we can ; otherwise if we must." Britain 
is forcing the "otherwise " upon Ireland ; and the alternative to a peace- 
ful solution is gradually taking possession of the most conservative Irish 
mind. It should never have left it, for English treachery is coeval with 
English rule in Ireland. 

Brave and gallant Dutchmen of South Africa, we hail your advent 
once more into the family* of nations ! On behalf of a gallant but 
oppressed race we salute the South African republic ! 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

(1881.) 

Gladstone's melodramatic scene in the london guildhall — 

arrest of parnell. 

Semi-agitation — Demi-semi-revolution — Men in the Breach — Duty of the Men at 
Home — "Lost Opportunities" — Renegades in Parliament — Twenty-five Deserters 
from Parnell — Shaw's Denunciatory Manifesto — Mr. Parnell in Paris — Henri Roche- 
fort — Victor Hugo — "Ideas are the Sovereigns of the World" — Sir Wm. Vernon 
Harcourt's Sneer — Gladstone's Land Bill — Excitement in Ireland — Gladstones 
Reception at Leeds — English Democracy does him Honor — Great Speech at 
Leeds — Mr. Gladstone Denounces Parnell — The State of Ireland not a Party Ques- 
tion — Gladstone Praises Dillon— Sir Charles Gavan Duffy — He would Beat a Drum 
to call Irish Attention to Gladstone's Land Bill — O'Connell's Five Characteristics — 
Ireland's Downward Course of Decay — Leeds Manufacturers — Parnell's Advice to 
Buy Foreign Goods — Cries of "Shame!" — Mr. Parnell in Wexford — He Answers 
Gladstone — " Means Used in '98 " — " We will be Boers ! " — " Gladstone the Greatest 
coercionist and Unrivaled Slanderer" — " No Misrepresentation too Low or too Mean 
for him " — " Masquerading Knight-errant " — " This Pretended Champion of Liberties 
Throws Off the Mask" — "His Bayonets and Buckshot" — Gladstone a Thousand 
Times More Dangerous a Foe To-day — Mr. John Dillon's Reply to Mr. Gladstone — 
"A Dishonest Politician" — A Hollander Tells Mr. Dillon " Blacker Treachery was 
Never Practiced by Any Man " — " He has Finally Overthrown the Idol Gladstone — 
The Fairy Changelings — Gladstone in the London Guildhall — His Speech — Melo- 
dramatic Scene — Entry of Telegraph Messenger — Gladstone Announces Parnell's 
Arrest — Uproarious Applause — " Not Words Alone" — " Resources of Civilization " 
— " Should be Carried into Acts " — Scene in the Streets Round the Mansion House 
and Royal Exchange — Immense Crowds — English Workingmen Cheer for the Arrest 
of Parnell— Great joy in London— Arrest of Mr. O'Kelly, M. P.— Mr Sexton, M. P. 
— Mr. Quinn — Gladstone's Lettre de cachet — Numerous Arrests — The Crusaders of 
Shame — Their Hundred-ton Gun— " No Rent" Manifesto — Signed by the Leaders 
in Prison — Rage and Indignation of the Irish People. 

Turning from the glorious and gallantly won independence of the 
South African republic it is our sad duty to record a chapter of suffering, 
humiliation, and degradation in our own beloved island. Turning from 
the valor of the Boers to the vacillation, impotence, and incompetence of 
the leaders of the Irish people, it is hard for an Irishman to have to chron- 
icle the lamentable sequel that succeeded Britain's attack upon the Irish 
delegates in her Parliament : semi-agitation carried on by some Irish 
leaders and demi-semi-revolution by others. The men in the gap were 
deserted in a dangerous breach, where they never would have been but 
for men who weakened in the face of results. If the true history of Ire- 
land is ever fully written how its pages will bristle with the records of 
"lost opportunities." 

Mr. Shaw, the leader of the renegades who deserted Mr. Parnell and 
went over to the English Minister, Mr. Gladstone, issued what was termed 
a manifesto. Speaking of Mr. Parnell and the leaders of the Land 
League he says : " I can understand and respect the revolutionists, but 
despise and condemn the mongrel that talks bluster, hints at physical 
force, shirking away at the first hint of danger, leaving the poor people 
he has fooled helpless in the hands of an enraged class and Government." 

Mr. Parnell went to Paris after he was turned out of the British Com- 
mons by his present chief, Mr. Gladstone. Mr. James O'Kelly, M. P., 
accompanied him. They visited all the great leaders of French thought ; 

367 



368 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

they had an interview with M. Henri Rochefort, a great sympathizer with 
suffering nationalities. Mr. Parnell did not ask from any of these illus- 
trious Frenchmen material support. His theory was that their sympathy 
and nothing more would be a weapon in his hands. Several of these 
men, more especially the revolutionary element, were puzzled at what 
Mr. Parnell meant. Like his own countrymen, they gave him credit for 
profound diplomacy, and thought that he was meditating a deep-laid and 
skillful attack upon his country's foe ; they never dreamed for an instant 
that he really believed that an invaded and enslaved nation could be freed 
with the expression of sympathy offered her by any man or men no 
matter how great. 

M. Henri Rochefort, speaking of meeting the Irish leader, observes : 

" I was greatly moved in shaking hands with Mr. Parnell, as I was 
some months since when I embraced Garibaldi. 

" The idol of the Irish people is a very fair young man, of whom 
Caesar might have said as of Cassius, ' He is very thin for a senator.' His 
eye of steel is severe. His face, almost ascetic, is calm like that of 
men whose minds are made up." 

On separating he said to M. Rochefort, " Adieu ! I dare not say au 
revoir, for probably I and Mr. O'Kelly will be in prison before the month 
is over." 

He had an interview with Marshal McMahon and Victor Hugo ; the 
latter entertained him and his friends at dinner. Speaking of the Irish 
question, Victor Hugo said, " True ideas are the sovereigns of the world ; 
brute force cannot prevail against them." 

Shade of the illustrious Frenchman, while it is true that ideas are the 
sovereigns of the world and that you cannot strangle or imprison them, 
it is a lamentable fact that without brute force they cannot be established. 
France held an idea that monarchy was destructive to her happiness, and 
the people rose in their might and by force established a republic. Ire- 
land has an idea she should govern herself ; so long as it remains an idea 
she will be enslaved, but when she determines on using brute force she 
may succeed. 

Mr. Gladstone passed his Coercion Bill, and every leading merchant, 
professional man, or trader who held Irish National views was " reason- 
ably suspected " and locked up in prison without trial or charge. 

Sir Wm. Vernon Harcourt, the Home Secretary, whom the Provincial- 
ists now term a Home Ruler, thus sneeringly alluded to Mr. Parnell's 
French visit : 

" Bon Jean was a gallant gentleman, 
In battles much delighting ; 
He fled full soon 
On the 1st of June, 
But bade the rest keep fighting." 

Mr. Gladstone passed his famous Land Bill, which has proven to be 
useless, evictions having multiplied since this Irish panacea became law. 

The excitement in Ireland grew more intense. The Irish leaders 
publicly advised mass meetings and resolutions as a cure for British 
despotism. What they were quietly preparing, and the momentous 
events which followed, will be told in their proper place. 

Mr. Gladstone was invited by the democracy of Leeds to visit their 
city, and to address them on the various public questions agitating their 
country. The Premier's reception was the grandest ever paid that 
eminent statesman. The populace turned out in their thousands to do 
him honor, and joyful acclamations rent the air. Leeds was en fete and 
was never tired of cheering the "Grand Old Man." He addressed a 
meeting in the Chamber of Commerce on questions of trade, and spoke 



SCENE IN THE LONDON GUILDHALL. 3 6 9 

in the Townhall to a crowded mass meeting, but reserved for the ban- 
quet tendered to him by the citizens on Friday evening, October 7, 1881, 
the delivery of his great speech on the Irish question. The following is 
a large part of this interesting and historic address : 

" There was one of those subjects largely mentioned to-day, and now 
again alluded to briefly in the address of your chairman, on which I 
think I shall best discharge my duty by addressing to you my own most 
earnest reflections. I mean the subject described by him under the 
emphatic phrase justice to Ireland (" Hear, hear ! ") — a great and sacred 
duty, but one that can never be performed, never justly pursued, without 
equal justice to England and Scotland. This morning I addressed to you in 
another place a speech turning largely upon the politics of our respective 
parties. This evening I must ask your attention with me to great and 
even solemn considerations more connected with matters which are in the 
highest sense national and imperial. The question of the state of Ireland is 
not and ought not to be a party question. (" Hear, hear ! ) I am afraid 
that for one moment I must refer to a point of party policy and discipline ; 
it shall be for a moment only. You are aware that the party opposed to 
ours has gloated during the last few weeks on its victory in the county of 
Durham. Let it enjoy all the satisfaction which the calm reflection will per- 
mit (cheers) to patriotic citizens in respect to a victory ; but for my part I 
desire no such victories. (" Hear, hear! " ) / trust that never will it happen that 
a member of the Liberal party with such a state of things in Irela?id shall go to 
his constituency, and, meeting the wish of a few hundreds of Irish voters who 
may turn the scale, shall solemnly propose to take out of the hands of the execu- 
tive Government their chief responsibility by binding himself, irrespective of 
all considerations, to vote for the unconditional release of every man whom the 
responsible Ministers of the Crown, acting upon the authority that Parliament 
has given them, have deemed it necessary for the peace of the country and for 
public order to confine. (Loud cheers.) 

" Lord Derby in a recent essay on the Land Act lately passed has 
declared — and in my opinion has justly declared — that the passing of the 
Land Act imposes on the Government new and special obligations with 
reference to the enforcement of the law and of the public peace insepara- 
ble from the first ideas of freedom, and without which no nation is either 
worthy to possess freedom or capable of enjoying it. (Cheers.) Now 
Ireland is in a great crisis. (" Hear, hear ! ") 

" Gentlemen, you have been — your party has been — for several genera- 
tions distinguished for its anxiety to promote the redress of Irish griev- 
ances, and you know you are constantly reproached with what is called 
the failure of your efforts, and far be it from me to say that their success 
has been complete ; but I will say that in my mind the man — I say 
coward — who despairs of the fate of Ireland amidst the scenes that are 
now unhappily being enacted there by certain persons. 

" I must quote to you a passage from a gentleman well known in this 
country some forty years ago as one of the extremest (?) of Irishmen — 
Sir Charles Gavan Duffy. He has since then run through a successful and 
lengthened political career in one of our great western Colonies ; he has 
come back to Dublin, he has come back with the same intensely national 
spirit as that with which he went away. He is not an altered man, but 
what does he say ? He has published a pamphlet from which I venture 
to extract the following passage. Describing the Act [Land] he says : 
' Now, my friends, is this not a measure to be received gratefully and to 



37° I 'IK IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

be utilized to its utmost possibility of good ? I mean, nothing is clearer 
than that all the productive energy, all the generous enthusiasm, of the 
people should be immediately directed to this task, that we ought to seize 
all points of vantage without delay. If 1 were a bishop I would write a 
pastoral, if I were a priest I would preach a discourse, if I were a jour- 
nalist 1 would make myself heard from the rostrum of the profession. If 
I could do no better 1 would beat a drum on the highway to command 
the ear and fix the attention of the Irish people on the splendid oppor- 
tunity they possess of becoming prosperous and happy.' (Loud cheers.) 
Gentlemen, that is the impartial judgment pronounced upon the Land 
Act by Irish patriotism of the old school. (Cheers.) 

" And now let me do justice to a gentleman whose name is in Ireland 
respected among those who differ most widely from him, and who was 
lately, under the discretion of the Government, confined in prison. Mr. 
Dillon, the member for Tipperary, is a man of the most extreme opinions 
upon every question connected with the nationality of Ireland. I am not 
going to recommend the adoption of his opinions, nor to profess any 
share of sympathy with them, but I am going to point out to you, first of 
all, that he is a man everyone acknowledges to be one of the most single- 
minded, devoted attachment to his country, and to be of a perfect un- 
swerving integrity (" Hear, hear ! ") ; and now I say to you, each one of 
you, suppose you are like Mr. Dillon, that you believed Ireland was 
entitled to a complete independent national existence (A voice, " Home 
Rule! "), which 1 think is what he believes, and supposing, while you were 
prosecuting that end, you found a measure passed by what they or//, some 
of tlu- in, an alien Parliament, granting a liberality unknown to the history 
of landed legislation, privilege and security to tlie cultivator of the soil, 
what would you do ? Would you, in consequence of your ulterior views, 
reject the boon ? Would you keep men in want who might enjoy abundance ? 
Would you keep men in insecurity who might be enjoying a stable con- 
fidence ? Would you keep men in a condition where they knew' nothing 
of the means of provision for their families, when they might have those 
means at their command, on account of your ulterior views ? No, you 
would not. You would say you were n'ot justified in intercepting the 
beneficent action of a measure like the Land Act, and that is what Mr. 
Dillon alone, I am sorry to say, among his friends has done. (" No, no ! " 
and cheers.) He has withdrawn himself from Ireland. He will not give up 
his extreme national views, but neither will he take upon himself the fearful 
responsibility of attempting to plunge the country into permanent destruc- 
tion and chaos by intercepting the operation of the Land Act. (Cheers.) 
That is the conduct of Mr. Dillon, and I name him as an opponent, but 
as an opponent whom I am glad to honor. (Cheers.) Now I have the 
painful duty of dealing with very different conduct. For nearly the first 
time in the history of Christendom a body — a small body — of men has 
arisen who are not ashamed to preach in Ireland the doctrine of public 
plunder. 1 make that charge advisedly in the situation which I 
hold (cheers), and I shall ask you to judge me whether it is not wrung 
from mc by demonstrative evidence and by the hard necessity of the case. 
Half a century ago the people of Ireland gave to Mr. O'Connell, a man of 
most remarkable gifts and powers, but not always acceptable in his 
opinions to the people of this country — a man in respect of whom it must 
be owned that he had five characteristics : he always declared his loyalty 
to the Crown, he always declared his desire for friendly relations with 
Great Britain, he always declared his respect for Great Britain — and he 
never stamped that declaration, so far as I know, by a word or act in 
contravention of it — he declared his respect for law and human life, and 



SCENE IN THE LONDON GUILDHALL. 371 

said that no political change — which was a strong thing to say — that no 
political change should be prosecuted by the shedding of one drop of 
human blood, and finally, O'Connell always availed himself in the pro- 
moting of any cause, whether it was small or whether it was great, how- 
ever far short it might fall of his views, of every measure which tended 
to the happiness of the people of Ireland. (Cheers.) That was the 
political education of the people of Ireland half a century ago. I must 
now describe to you briefly upon these five points the political education 
which they are now receiving. And the consideration which oppresses 
me and almost weighs me to the ground at this moment is this, that even 
within a few short weeks, certainly within a few short months, it may 
have to be decided which of these two forms of political education the 
people of Ireland will prefer. I take as the representative of the opinion 
1 denounce the name of a gentleman of considerable ability, the name 
of Mr. Parnell, the member for Cork ; but while I admit he is a man of 
considerable ability, I say his doctrines are not such as require any very 
considerable ability to recommend them. (Laughter and cheers.) If 
you go forth on a mission to demoralize a people by teaching them to 
make the property of their neighbors the object of their covetous desires 
it does not require superhuman gifts to find a certain number of followers 
and adherents for that. (Laughter.) 

" A handful of men in Parliament, whom I will not call a party, for they 
are not entitled to be called a party, are the gentlemen who make them- 
selves effectually responsible for the new gospel of Irish patriotism, and 
even with them I know not — so hard it is to understand — how far it may 
be with them a matter of compulsion, and how far a matter of will. I 
will not attempt to identify them. I will frankly take the case of Mr. 
Parnell as exhibiting what I mean when I say the state of things in Ire- 
land is coming to a question between law on the one hand and sheer law- 
lessness on the other. (" Hear, hear ! ") I will go very briefly — and the 
importance of the subject I am sure will justify me if I have detained 
you longer than I ought. (" No, no.") . . . 

"O'Connell professed his unconditional loyalty to the Crown of Eng- 
land. Mr. Parnell says, If the Crown of England is to be the link between 
the two countries it must be the only link, but whether it is to be the link 
at all — I am not quoting his words — is a matter on which he has not, I 
believe, given any opinion whatsoever. (" Hear, hear! ") 

" O'Connell desired friendly relations with the people of this country — 
cordial, hearty friendship. What does Mr. Parnell desire ? He says the 
Irish people must make manufactures of their own in order that they may 
buy nothing from England. (Laughter.) I do not believe him to be a pro- 
found political economist. (" Hear, hear ! ") But it may have occurred to 
him it may be rather difficult if the Irish people are to produce for them- 
selves in a short time, by the labor of their own hands, with everything that 
they now desire from England. He is prepared for that alternative, and 
he says : • If you cannot make the manufactured articles yourselves you 
must buy them from foreign countries, but whatever you do you must not 
buy them from England.' (Loud cries of " Shame ! ") I say, gentlemen, 1 
think you will begin to perceive that in the strong language I have used 
to describe the position of affairs in Ireland I am not wholly without 
justification (cheers), and when I proceed to say that whereas friendship 
with England was the motto of O'Connell, hostility to England and to 
Scotland is the motto and avowed principle of Mr. Parnell. 

" Now that the Land Act has passed into law, and now that Mr. Parnell 
is afraid lest the people of England, by their long-continued efforts, should 



372 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

win the hearts of the whole of the Irish nation, he has a new and enlarged 
gospel of plunder to proclaim. He says that whereas the rental of Ireland 
is seventeen million pounds of money, the landlord is entitled to nothing 
but the original value of the land before the spade was put into it, and 
that the rental he may justly claim is not seventeen million, but possibly 
about three million of money. I ask you as honest men, not as politicians, 
not as Liberals, not in any other capacity — I ask you whether it is possi- 
ble to describe proceedings of this kind in any words more just than the 
promulgation of the doctrine of sheer plunder ? 

" Mr. Parnell is very copious in his reference to America. He has 
said America is the only friend of Ireland, but in all his references to 
America he has never found time to utter one word of disapproval of or 
misgiving about what is known as the assassination literature of that coun- 
try. . . 

" There are, it is sad to say, a knot of Irishmen who are not ashamed 
to point out in the press which they maintain how the ships of her 
Majesty's navy ought to be blown into the air to destroy the power of 
England by secret treachery. (" Shame ! ") 

" You may have heard of an explosion of dynamite in Salford not 
very long ago. There was the death of one person in consequence of 
the explosion. The death of another was expected, but I believe was 
averted, and Mr. Parnell, the gentleman to whom I refer, said that that 
occurrence in Salford appeared to him to bear the character of a practi- 
cal joke. (" Shame ! ") 

" How has Mr. Parnell met us during the last session ? With every 
effort he could use to disparage, to discredit, and if he could to destroy 
the Land Bill. But he did not dare to go beyond a certain point. He 
did not dare to vote against the bill like a man (loud cheers), because he 
knew if he did his own Land Leaguers in Ireland would rise in a body 
against him. (Cries of " Hear, hear ! ") But when the Tories, unfortu- 
nately as I think, determined to oppose the billon the second reading, and 
when the life of that bill was at stake, Mr Parnell with about thirty of his 
followers withdrew from the House, thus endeavoring indirectly to 
destroy the work we had begun and to defeat the arduous efforts we had 
made. (" Hear, hear ! ") 

" And I see that among his latest declarations he has said — pray 
observe his words : ' We propose to test the Land Act, not use it.' Well, 
but a fair test of an act is to use it. (Cheers.) 

" I will give you yet one more brief quotation from one who writes 
thus upon the condition of Ireland : ' What is amazing and discouraging 
is that during the past eighteen months no Irishman in Ireland has lifted 
up his voice to warn his countrymen or to condemn the statements made 
by Parnell.' 

" There is no middle class there as there is in England to step for- 
ward to sustain the Government and to denounce the evil. 

" I am glad to see opposite to my eyes the name of Mr. Forster. (Loud 
cheers.) ... " He represents in Ireland that cause which I hope will 
triumph ! " (" Hear ! ") 

Mr. Gladstone struck the keynote of British public opinion, even the 
most radical, when he stated that justice to Ireland must be tempered by 



SCENE IN THE LONDON GUILDHALL. 373 

the recollection that British interests were involved. Justice to England 
and Scotland, as he expressed it, must not be impaired by doing justice to 
Ireland. Or in other words, it would be a grievous injustice to the burglar 
who had broken into your house and plundered it of your property, 
which he had made his own, to expect him to return any of the stolen 
goods. It is these so-called British interests, or justice, which make a 
peaceful solution of the Irish question impossible. British and Irish 
material interests are antagonistic. 

Mr. Gladstone is always under a convenient delusion about Ireland 
and Irishmen. When he speaks of that highly respectable West-British 
knight Sir Charles Gavan Duffy as an extremist he purposely falls into 
this vein. This good knight is spending his declining years making 
imaginary constitutions for Ireland, and if in his dotage he can enjoy him- 
self beating drums on the highway in praise of Mr. Gladstone's exploded 
sham, the Land Act of 1881, why, let him do so. He never was more than 
an Irish sentimentalist even in his young days. 

Mr. Gladstone expatiates on what a great boon to Ireland his Land 
Bill was. Possibly he really believed this. But if three-fourths of the Irish 
tenants were made a gift of their holdings they could not even then enjoy 
the abundance Mr. Gladstone spoke of. 

When Mr. Gladstone alluded to Irishmen not buying English manu- 
factures his Leeds audience of mill owners and merchants cried out 
unanimously " Shame ! " The beadle who stood transfixed with astonish- 
ment when Oliver Twist had the temerity to ask for more was not near 
so much astounded as were these British merchants at the presumption 
of the Irish people daring to think of buying goods elsewhere. There is 
where the shoe pinches. They do not care much about either tenants or 
landlords, but touch their trade and you hurt the British to the quick, and 
you cannot alter the present conditions of trade and manufactures between 
these two islands and so interfere with Britain's greatest interest — which is 
also Ireland's greatest interest — without Irishmen having absolute power 
over the legislature and government of their own country. 

In Mr. Gladstone's allusion to American literature he appears to for- 
get the blowing up of Sekukini's stronghold and the thousands of women 
and children who were there sacrificed to British lust of power. At the 
same time Nationalists do not advocate, but, like all Irishmen, condemn, 
any injury done wantonly to British women and children. Irishmen 
do not make war on the helpless ; they leave that to the pious Mr. Glad- 
stone. A little later it will be recorded in this history many such cruel 
murders by Mr. Gladstone's agents in Ireland, not the ebullition of 
temper or accident, but the deliberate assassination of helpless women and 
children of tender years. 

The foul lie and slander against Irishmen that they kill women and 
children is freely circulated by the great assassination organ the London 
Times, a paper that keeps continually howling for murder, whether it is 
Zulus, Basutos, Boers, Arabs, Egyptians, or Irish that are to be killed. Its 
thirst for human gore is insatiable. There never has been in all the 
guerrilla warfare or physical struggles forced upon the Irish one single 
English child or woman injured. 

On the contrary, when a tyrannic despot ruled in Ireland whose brutal 
conduct made the world wonder that the Irish spared his life, it was 
spared because of the dangers to which his lady escorts would be exposed. 
This man of blood was within two seconds of certain death but for the fact 
that the lady members of his family were in the carriage with him. The 
hands of those who were about to smite were stayed by a man whom he 
or his brutal master would not spare if in their power, regardless of that 
Irishman's family. This tyrant knew the chivalry of Irish revolutionists 



374 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and so saved his life by surrounding himself at all possible times with 
his lady protectors. They did what his armed guardians could not have 
succeeded in doing. They saved his life, justly forfeited to the nation 
he invaded, and whose people he was slaying with buckshot and bayonet. 

This is one of the many unwritten pages in Irish history. 

The literature which Mr. Gladstone alludes to as circulated in Amer- 
ica Irish Nationalists condemn ; not for its advocacy of the most destruc- 
tive measures possible in their war against their country's foe — on the 
contrary, this manly and patriotic teaching should be widespread — but they 
condemn specifying the particulars of these in advance of any action 
taken, which is weak and foolish, and helps to make Irishmen look ridicu- 
lous in the presence of other races. If these particular acts, specified 
and publicly printed, were really intended it apprises the foe and places 
him at once on the alert, which is downright treason no matter what are 
the intentions of the writer. If not intended and only thrown out as a 
feeler it is simply a piece of buncombe which covers Irishmen with 
shame. 

There can be no clearer illustration of the differences and antago- 
nisms which exist between these two peoples, the British and the Irish, 
than the reception accorded to Mr. Gladstone in Leeds and that to Mr. 
Parnell in Wexford. Notwithstanding the oppression of British rule 
the Irish can always equal any other people in getting up public demon- 
stration. Mr. Parnell's reception by the gallant Wexford men was as 
enthusiastic and demonstrative as that given Mr. Gladstone by his 
countrymen in Leeds. If possible the Wexford men outdid themselves 
upon this occasion, for Mr. Parnell was doubly endeared to them because 
of the onslaught made upon him by the English Premier. 

There were frieze-coated soldiers there that day who if armed and 
properly led would have made as successful a record in an encounter with 
British troops as did the gallant and now independent Boers. The occa- 
sion was a momentous one, for every listener knew that Mr. Parnell would 
reply to Mr. Gladstone. Well and ably did the Irish leader respond. 
He rose to the height of the occasion and completely overwhelmed the 
English Minister in his masterly answer. But vain are words, they are 
useless, yet Irish leaders will still persist in the face of their utter inability 
to fight England by talk. Mr. Parnell said : 

" People of the city and county of Wexford, I am proud to see that 
your county has not forgotten her traditions, but that you are prepared to-day, 
as you always were, to return a fitting answer to threats and intimidation — 
aye, and if it should become necessary, to those means which were used in '98 
(loud cheers) by an unscrupulous government — means which failed then, 
and which, please God, will fail again. (Cheers.) You in this county have 
arrived at the commencement of the second year of the existence of this 
great Land League movement. You have gained something by your 
exertions during the last twelve months, but I am here to-day to tell you 
that you have gained but a fraction of that to which you are justly entitled 
(cheers), and the Irishman who thinks that he can throw away his arms 
just as Grattan disbanded the Volunteers will find to his sorrow and 
destruction when too late that he has placed himself in the power of a 
perfidious, cruel, and unrelenting English enemy. (Cheers.) You have 
had an opportunity recently of studying the utterances of a very great 
man, and a very great orator. The person who till recently desired to impress 
upon the world a great opinion of his philanthropy and hatred of oppres- 
sion, but who stands the greatest coercionist, the greatest and most 
unrivaled slanderer of the Irish nation that ever undertook that task. 
(Cheers.) I refer to William Ewart Gladstone (groans), and his unscrupu- 
lous and dishonest speech of the day before yesterday. Not content with 



SCENE IN THE LONDON GUILDHALL. 375 

maligning you, he maligns John Dillon. (Cheers for Dillon.) He endeavors 
to misrepresent the Young Ireland party of 1848. No misrepresentation 
is too patent, too low, or too mean for him to stoop to, and it is a good sign 
that this masquerading knight-errant, this pretended champion of the 
liberties of every other nation except those of the Irish nation, should be 
obliged to throw off the mask to-day and to stand revealed as the 
man who by his own utterances is prepared to carry fire and sword into your 
homesteads unless you humble and abase yourselves before him and then 
before the landlords of this country. (Cheers.) 

"In his opinion no man in Ireland is good until he is dead and unable 
to do anything more for his country. (Cheers.) In the opinion of this 
English statesman no man is good in Ireland until he is buried and is 
unable to strike a blow for Ireland, and perhaps the day may come when I 
may get a good word from Englishmen as being a moderate man when I am- 
dead and buried. (Laughter and cheers.) 

" I don't wish to anticipate the speech that Mr. Dillon will make irt 
reply to Mr. Gladstone, . . . but I merely wish to point out in passing 
that while William Ewart Gladstone admires Mr. Dillon to-day as one 
of the most single-minded men, devotedly attached to his country, 
and to be of unswerving integrity, but twelve months ago he put up 
his mouthpiece in the House of Commons to declare that John Dillon 
was weak and cowardly. And when Mr. Gladstone, a little lower down, 
accuses us of preaching the doctrine of public plunder and of proclaim- 
ing a new doctrine of plunder, and, further down, of promulgating a 
gospel of sheer plunder (A voice: "That is his own doctrine!") — I 
would be obliged to my friend in the crowd if he would leave me to 
make the speech and not be anticipating me (laughter) — when people 
talk of public plunder they should first ask themselves and recall to 
mind who were the first public plunderers in Ireland. (A voice : 
"The English." Cheers.) The land of Ireland has been confiscated 
three times over by the men whose descendants Mr. Gladstone is sup- 
porting in the fruits of their plunder by his bayonets and his buckshot. 
(Groans). 

" The ' doctrine of public plunder ' is only a question of degree. Who 
was it that first sanctioned the doctrine of public plunder? will be asked 
by some persons. 

"I am proceeding upon the lines of an amendment in the Land Act 
of 1881, which was introduced by Mr. Healy (cheers), framed by Mr. 
Gladstone's Attorney-General for Ireland, and sanctioned by Mr. Glad- 
stone and his whole Cabinet, the House of Commons and the House of 
Lords. . . 

" I say that his doctrine of public plunder is a question of degree. As 
William Ewart Gladstone has showed himself capable of eating his words, 
and able to recede from principles and declarations which he has laid 
down, why, with just as much fervor as that with which he made the speech 
the other evening, he will before long, if he lives long enough, introduce 
a bill into the House of Commons to extend this very principle of public 
plunder which he has sanctioned by his Act of 1881. 

" So that if we are to go into the question the utmost that Mr. Glad- 
stone and the Liberal party will be able to make out of it will be to find 
that there are some persons very much better entitled to call him a little 
robber than he is to call me a big one. 



37 6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

" Then, again, Mr. Gladstone says that I am afraid now the Land Act 
has been passed lest the people of England, by their long-sustained 
efforts, should win the hearts of the whole Irish nation. Long-sustained 
efforts in what? Was it in evicting two thousand tenants since the ist of 
January last ? (Cheers.) Was it in putting two hundred honorable and 
brave men in Kilmainham and the other jails of the country ? Was it in 
issuing a police circular of a more infamous character than any which has 
been ever devised by any foreign despot? Was it in sending hundreds of 
thousands of rounds of ball cartridges to his Bashi-Bazouks throughout 
the country ? Was it in sharpening the bayonets of the latest issue to the 
Royal Irish Constabulary? And if it was not, if all these long-sustained 
efforts which Mr. Gladstone has taken up nobly and well from his pre- 
decessor in the title of misgoverning Ireland, I should like to know what 
were the efforts of which William Ewart Gladstone talks when he 
speaks of these long-sustained efforts to which he is making for the people 
of Ireland. 

" Mr. Gladstone in those few short words admits that the English 
Government has failed in Ireland. He admits the contention that 
Grattan and the Volunteers of '82 fought for ; he admits the contention 
that the men of '98 (cheers) lost their lives for ; he admits the contention 
that O'Connell argued for j he admits the contention that the men of '48 
staked their all for ; he admits the contention that the men of '65 (cheers) 
after a long period of depression and of apparent death of all national 
life in Ireland cheerfully faced the dungeon and the horrors of penal 
servitude for ; and he admits the contention that to-day you in your 
overpowering multitude have re-established, and, please God, will bring 
to a successful issue and a final issue — namely, that England's mission 
in Ireland has been a failure and that Irishmen have established [?] their 
right to govern Ireland by laws made by themselves for themselves on 
Irish soil (cheers) ; and he winds up with the threat — this man who has no 
moral force behind him — he winds up with the threat, ' No fear of force 
and no fear of ruin through force shall so far as we are concerned and 
as it is in our power.' I say it is not in his power to trample on the 
■aspirations and the rights of the Irish people with no moral force behind 
ihim. These are very brave words that he uses, but it strikes me that 
they have a ring about them like the whistle of a schoolboy on his way 
through a churchyard at night to keep up his courage. (Cheers.) He 
would have you to believe that he is not afraid of you, because he has 
disarmed you, because he has attempted to disorganize you, because he 
iknows that the Irish nation is to-day disarmed, so far as physical weapons 
go [?J ; but he does not hold this kind of language with the Boers. (Great 
excitement ; loud and prolonged cheers for the Boers ; cries heard in all 
directions offering Mr. Parnell their services as Irish soldiers, and repeated 
cries of, "We will be Boers ! ") 

" He said something of this kind at the commencement of the session 
with regard to the Boers. He said he was going to put them down, but as 
soon as he discovered that they were able to shoot straighter than his soldiers 
he allowed these few men to put himself and his Government down. . . 
And I trust the result of this great movement will be . . . we shall see 
that the brave words of the English Prime Minister will be scattered as 
chaff before the united and advancing determination of the Irish people 
to regain for themselves their lost legislative independence." 

This powerful, able, and analytic reply to the " Grand Old Man's " 
Leeds speech was one of Mr. Parnell's best efforts ; there is not one 
single expression used that could be deemed too strong in unmasking this 



SCENE IN THE LONDON GUILDHALL. 377 

hypocritical statesman, this false Liberal. But at present Nationalists 
retain the same views as Mr. Parnell held of Mr. Gladstone in Wexford. 
Mr. Parnell spoke truly when he said that Irish patriots must be dead, 
buried, and useless before they will be praised by Englishmen. What 
a Nemesis some speeches are ! and this one — it stands out as the last 
manly public utterance of one that so many Irishmen centered such 
hopes on. 

The men of Wexford wished to do as the Boers did or as their brave 
grandsires did in '98, but Mr. Parnell spent more money arguing, as he 
expresses it in O'Connell's case, the English out of Ireland — vainly, as 
a matter of course — than would have put a rifle in the hands of every 
man in his auditory. 

Mr. Gladstone was a dangerous foe to Irish liberty that October, 
1881, but he is a thousand times more dangerous at the date of writing, 
September, 1887. Truly has that great delineator of character George 
Eliot written : " Alas ! how easy it is to believe what the world keeps 
repeating ! " The insidious teaching of Mr. Gladstone is more poisonous 
to Irish nationality than his coercion acts when in power. 

On the following Tuesday there was a meeting of the Irish National 
Land League. Mr. Dillon came there specially to repudiate Mr. Glad- 
stone's compliments at Leeds. Mr. John Dillon said : 

" I had not expected to be among you for some time, nor would I 
had it not been for the extraordinary and unexpected event which took 
place the other day. I allude, of course, to the speech delivered by 
Mr. Gladstone at Leeds. . . 

" I felt a strong impression that I had already passed into another 
world upon reading Mr. Gladstone's speech, but having by a long 
series of experiments convinced myself that I was still in this wicked 
world and ' vale of tears,' my first feeling was that I owed an ex- 
planation to my countrymen of how it was that I came to be praised 
by an English Minister. (" Hear, hear ! " ) 

" Mr. Gladstone has grossly, I will not say deliberately, misrepre- 
sented me. 

" Diametrically opposite to that was what Mr. Dillon had sought to 
do, and the only trouble in which Mr. Dillon was immersed was this — that f 
I had not succeeded in standing between my country and the Land Act. 
(Cheers.) If I had had my way not only would I have stood between my 
country and the Land Act, but I would have thrown out Mr. Gladstone and 
his Government ("Hear, hear!") I believe that the reason I was impris- 
oned was because the Government considered the attitude which I adopted 
was endangering the Land Bill, and with the Land Bill the Government. 
(" Hear, hear! " ) It was notorious. When I was arrested I was on my 
way to London to protest against the acceptance of the Land Bill and 
intended to tell the Government I believed they were wasting their time 
and the time of the country in discussing a measure which when passed 
would not bring peace to Ireland. 

" The Government had me locked up for three months for opposing 
the Land Act and seeking to stand between my people and the act. 

" Mr. Gladstone has the reputation of being greater than I am, but 
able as I acknowledge him to be, I never knew before that he had the 
ability of knowing what Dillon thought better than Dillon himself 
knew. (Laughter.). . . 

" If anything were necessary to confirm Mr. Parnell in the confidence 



37 s THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

of the Irish people it would be supplied by the denunciation of the English 
Minister. (" Hear, hear!") Gladstone hates Parnell. Why? Because 
he has not the power to remove him from his path either by argument or 
by wheedling. (" Hear, hear ! ") 

" As an illustration of the dishonesty of the Government, and to bring 
home to the minds of the people that Mr. Gladstone has proved himself 
to be a dishonest politician, I will read extracts from which / contend he 
has deceived the Boers. Mr. Gladstone has got into power in great part 
by denouncing the action of the late Government in annexing the Trans- 
vaal to the British Empire. He has denounced, when he was canvass- 
ing Midlothian, the action of the late Government as an inexcusable 
wrong, which it would be his first duty to reverse. When he came into 
power he explained the reason why he did not attempt to reverse it. 
He waited, he says, until the Dutch rose in arms against his rule. What 
did he do then ? He sent out orders to have them put down by force 
of arms. 

" I heard him myself in the House of Commons at the commencement 
of the session say that he would enter into no terms with the Dutch until 
the authority of the Queen was re-established in South Africa. 

" He was beaten once and he did not stop the war ; he was beaten a 
second time and he did not stop the war ; but he was beaten a third time 
at Majuba Hill and then he gave in. (Cheers.) There is no getting out 
of that dilemma. I was in London and met the leader of the deputation 
from Holland who came over to negotiate and ask mercy for his country- 
men. I met the leader and he told me that blacker treachery had 
never been practiced by any man than by this leader of the Liberal party. 
He told me he was detained in London by fair promises while orders 
even had gone out to South Africa to fight at Majuba Hill, and it was 
only when Majuba Hill was fought that it was discovered the English 
were strong enough to be generous. (Laughter.) 

" But the moral to be drawn from that is this — that Gladstone's repu- 
tation as a politician is, I believe, a false reputation and based upon a most 
extraordinary gift — perhaps the most extraordinary possessed by any man 
'in England — if I will not say conscious but deliberate. Whether con- 
scious or unconscious skillful misrepresentation of facts. (Cheers.) 

" In conclusion I will say we have heard a great deal — at least I know 
I have since I was very young — of the good things which Mr. Gladstone 
had done for Ireland and the good things which he meant to do for 
Ireland, but in my opinion the best speech he made the other day in 
Leeds, because by that speech he has finally overthrown the idol named 
Gladstone which certain politicians for years endeavored to keep before 
the eyes of the Irish people. By that speech he has administered the coup 
de grace to British legislation in Ireland, and in that speech he has 
openly challenged the Irish people to declare whether they will accept 
the leadership of his agent Forster (hisses) or follow the leadership which 
they have deliberately selected to follow." 

And the Mr. Gladstone of this date (1887) is more dangerous still to 
Irish independence, more skillful^and more hypocritical as the years 
advance. 

There lives to-day a gentleman, one of Mr. Gladstone's followers, that 
man of " black treachery " whom John Dillon so ably and so patriot- 
ically denounced in October, 1881. This gentleman mockingly represents 
the dead John Dillon and insultingly bears his name to desecrate his 
memory. The West-British representative of the dead patriot and his 



SCENE IN THE LONDON GUILDHALL. 379 

renegade friends have re-erected the idol Gladstone, and offer it the most 
slavish and servile worship. 

In our childhood's days, in that dear old land we may never see 
again, we remember the stories of the fairy changelings. As we grew 
older we grew out of the belief of these beautiful Irish legends, but our 
matured manhood convinces us that there are wicked fairies still in the 
island of Britain, and of these the most destructive to Irish patriots is 
the House of Commons fairy. This wicked fairy king has deprived 
Ireland of every valuable and earnest son that ever crossed the threshold 
of the British Commons as a deputy, and given Ireland back a weak 
changeling with the soul stolen from its garb of clay, which this fairy 
king replaces by a craven West-British peace-at-any-price spirit, lacking 
the Englishman's courage, and vacillating between sickly praise of the 
British people and a weak recollection that he bears an honored 
Irish name. 

Had Mr. John Dillon, who delivered this honest address at the Dublin 
meeting six years ago, been alive how he would have denounced and 
exposed the repeated treachery of this Minister. Had he lived to read 
the bill which this statesman called " Home Rule " for Ireland how he 
would have denounced the sham and saved his people and the world 
from being so foully deceived. 

Mr. Gladstone could not refute Mr. Parnell's speech at Wexford nor 
Mr. Dillon's chastening rebuke at the League rooms in Dublin ; but this 
man of peace could arrest and imprison these once gallant gentlemen. 

But before doing so Mr. Gladstone made arrangements to celebrate 
the event in a manner befitting its importance, and to further impress 
upon his countrymen the solemnity of the occasion, and the superior 
wisdom of the Heaven-sent Minister who then guarded Britain's great- 
ness against the wily Irish foe. The Premier prepared his historic tableau 
with all due care ; no detail to create effect was omitted. The central 
figure of this tableau, as arranged, was to be Britain's Prime Minister, the 
benign Mr. Gladstone, receiving the homage of his political opponents 
the London Tory merchants for the suppression of Irish leaders who were 
then hostile to British rule in their country. 

Mr. Gladstone was invited to a reception in the Guildhall, London, on 
Thursday, October 13, 1881. There before the Lord Mayor, aldermen, 
and city council, and in the presence of the leading merchants of that 
wealthy metropolis, he delivered an address on the national politics of 
the hour. After the preliminary opening remarks, which with this verbose 
gentleman were most profuse, he said : 

" You may remember that on certain subjects I did, in the great town of 
Leeds, speak upon what I held to be purely national and imperial inter- 
ests — interests which are committed to my charge, interests actually 
deposited in our hands — by those words, worthy or unworthy of the task. 
I now beg that you will look upon me simply as a representative of the 
executive powers and of the authority of the law, and that you will 
therefore for a moment meet me upon a ground common to us all. 
(Cheers.) I am glad to see you are prepared for a reference to that 
question. It is a question which ought to enter, and must enter, into the 
thoughts of every intelligent native of the country. It has come too 
near to us to be put back. (Renewed cheers.) Pressed by the enormous 
activity of civic and social and political and personal life, it is very 
difficult for us to give due appreciation to all public questions, how- 
ever grave ; but at times they will assume prominence and assert them- 
selves with a force which cannot be mistaken, and that is the case with the 
Irish question at this moment. (" Hear, hear ! ") The issue that is there 
raised is no issue of political party, (Cheers.) I have said, and say it again, 



380 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

after I had the opportunity of communication with my colleagues, and 
after having assured myself with that communication that I did not in 
the slightest degree misrepresent their opinions, that the Government 
recognizes that it is charged in Ireland with the most arduous and solemn 
duties, and these duties to the best of its ability it is determined 
to perform. (Cheers.) It is no unnatural criticism upon those words 
which expressed the hope that they would not be words alo?ie. Our 
decision, my Lord Mayor, our determination, has been that to the 
best of our power they should be carried i?ito acts." 

At this part of Mr. Gladstone's speech a movement was perceptible 
in the crowd of gentlemen who surrounded him — this was the thrilling 
scene in the tableau — and very soon was seen emerging from the throng 
near the Prime Minister a telegraph messenger boy, who handed the 
Premier a telegram, which he quickly opened, scanning over its con- 
tents. The information contained in that telegram must have been in 
Mr. Gladstone's possession long before he visited the Guildhall, for he 
himself gave the order which resulted in the information he was about to 
convey to his audience. The messenger boy was plainly a melodra- 
matic trick to add additional luster to Britain's victory over Irish disaffec- 
tion by the imprisonment of her leaders. Resuming his speech, he 
turned toward his audience, and in solemn tone and aspect said : 

"And even within these few minutes I have been informed that, toward 
the vindication of law, of order, and the right of property, of the freedom 
of the land, of the first elements of political life and the resources of 
civilization, the first step has been taken in the arrest of the man [the 
reverend city fathers here grew frantic with joy, the whole audience burst 
into loud and prolonged cheers, waving of hats and handkerchiefs — it was 
such a famous British victory] — in the arrest of the man who unhappily, 
from motives which I do not challenge, which I cannot examine, and with 
which I have nothing to do, has made himself beyond all others prominent 
in the attempt to destroy the law (cheers) and to substitute what would 
end in leaving nothing more nor less than anarchical oppressions exercised 
upon the people of Ireland. (Loud cheers.) My Lord Mayor, it is not 
with the people of Ireland that we are at issue. (" Hear, hear! ") Our 
firm belief is that the people of Ireland — and especially the mass of the 
tenantry of that country, constituting, as you are aware, of themselves con- 
siderably more than a moiety of that entire people — are earnestly desired 
to make full trial of the equitable bill which with great labor, effort, and 
resolution Parliament has introduced into the law of the land. (Cheers.) 

" It is not any point connected with the exercise of local government in 
Ireland ; /'/ is not even on any point connected with what is popularly known 
as ' Home Rule,' and which may be understood in any one way of a 
hundred senses, some of them perfectly acceptable and even 
desirable, and others of them mischievous and revolutionary." 

The Premier concluded his momentous speech amid deafening cheers 
and plaudits from his English hearers. 

It happened that on that very afternoon the writer was passing through 
that always busy thoroughfare in front of the Royal Exchange, London. 
The place was densely packed with people ; they were crowded on the 
steps of the Mansion House ; the Royal Exchange was black with heads ; 
they overflowed into Threadneedle Street, King William Street, and 
Queen Victoria Street ; and looking down the Poultry and Cheapside on 
toward the Guildhall and past King Street it was one solid wedge of 
people, cheering with the most unbounded enthusiasm. About this time 
Mr. Gladstone had come to that dramatic episode in his historic speech 
when he informed the London merchants of the Irish leader's arrest. Then 



SCENE IN THE LONDON GUILDHALL. 381 

the cheers from the Guildhall were taken up by the immense throngs out- 
side and re-echoed and reverberated with uproarious joy from a thousand 
throats in that enormous multitude. Standing for a moment with a friend 
in a dazed condition, for we knew something of great import had moved 
the English crowd to such unwonted bursts of joy, we asked a bystander, 
when the extravagant expressions of delight enabled us to be heard, 
what caused this unusual throng and demonstrative happiness ; the 
answer came that their idol, Mr. Gladstone, was in the Guildhall, and that 
their enemy, Parnell, was in Kilmainham. This reply came from an 
English working/nan ; the cheering crowd was mainly composed of English 
workingmen. This is'an answer to the " educators of the English people." 
There are moments in life that cannot be forgotten ; they come to all men. 
This deliberate insult to our country in the arrest of her chief citizen 
stung us to the quick ; the tumultuous feelings of hate and rage had to be 
suppressed ; we felt it was a time not for " words alone," as the English 
Minister stated, but that to the best of our people's power, if our race was 
not the veriest slaves that crawl worm-like on the ground, their words 
" should be carried into acts" — again quoting Mr. Gladstone. Making our 
way through the surging crowd toward St. Paul's Churchyard, we heard 
the newsboys cry, " Harrest of Parnell, harrest of Parnell ! " It seemed as 
if the papers were by some direction kept back until the curtain dropped 
after the tableau in the Guildhall. The papers informed their readers 
that Superintendent Mallon and five policemen arrested Mr. Parnell 
early that morning in Morrison's Hotel, Dublin, and conveyed him at 
nine o'clock to Kilmainham jail. So that the Irish leader was housed in 
prison seven hours before the British leader announced it in his spectacular 
drama amid the city fathers. The Prime Minister was indeed carrying 
his words into acts. Mr. Sexton, M. P., Mr. Quinn, assistant secretary of 
the Land League, who succeeded Mr. Brennan, the secretary, who was 
already incarcerated, Mr. O'Kelly, M. P., and several leading merchants 
received the "grand old Liberal's " lettre de cachet. Of these were Mr. 
Downing, manager of Mr. Cassidy's distillery, Monasterevan, and Mr. 
Henry Egan, J. P., Tullamore, the leading merchant of that town, and a 
goodly company of others. 

The Land League Council in Dublin held a meeting, at which they 
denounced the Government as usual, and protested against the arrest of 
the Irish leader and his brother members. Mr. John Dillon was appointed 
to take Mr. Parnell's place. But the amiable and benevolent Mr. Glad- 
stone very curiously did not heed the protests and resolutions as he did 
the Boers' bullets ; ignoring this Dublin meeting, he arrested Mr. Dillon, 
M. P., next day — a very incomprehensible proceeding when it is con- 
sidered that that powerful weapon " public opinion " was completely in 
favor of the League. Even that much prized gift — an arsenal in itself — 
American sympathy was altogether in favor of Mr. Parnell, and yet this 
erratic but benevolent " Grand Old Man " did not appear to heed 
French, American, or German public opinion, but went on taking such 
personal care of the Irish Leaguers that he locked them up under his 
servants' guardianship. 

Now came the supreme public effort of the crusaders. The great 
hundred-ton gun of moral suasion and passive resistance came forth to 
annihilate the British enemy and his satellites, the landlords. This was 
the famous No Rent manifesto. It appeared shortly after the arrest of 
Mr. Dillon. United Ireland, the organ of the Land League, edited by Mr. 
Wm. O'Brien, commenting on the arrest of Mr. Parnell, in its editorial of 
October 15, 1881, spoke as follows : 

" His spirit is abroad in a million Irish hearts ; his work is done ; his 
lesson is taught. It has sunk into our souls, it has lifted up our hearts 



382 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

above the terrors of their dungeons, above their dastard power, above their 
dastard bribes. Mr. Gladstone's argument at Leeds was shattered to 
pieces by Parnell's argument at Wexford. The old hypocrite has mended 
his argument by the help of his police, and has answered his opponent 
by garroting him. It is not our province to point out the means by which 
the farmers of Ireland can now answer Gladstone. Nobody can doubt 
what they are. Without stepping one inch outside the law the Irish 
farmers have ample revenge ready to their hands. Never was there such 
a chance of covering our nation with glory." 

The Turkish Mohammedans were never more devoted to the doctrines 
of their faith, never more fanatical in their devotion to the holy Kaaba, 
never more firm and true believers in the Koran, than Mr. O'Brien of 
United Ireland is in the doctrine of " moral suasion." He is sincerely 
and purely an affectionate son of Ireland, and is a gentleman of many and 
varied accomplishments, a cultured writer and speaker, and a man who 
would undoubtedly ornament any position his country would place him 
in. But one thing Mr. O'Brien or his views could never do, they could 
never free a nation. He may waste his soul away in vain and frantic 
struggles, protestations, and resolutions in every tongue or dialect spoken 
on the earth — he may resolve and protest a thousandfold, but these can 
never lift the iron hand of foreign rule from the island of his birth, the 
beloved land Irishmen are all trying to serve. Examine this leading 
article in Mr. O'Brien's paper ; every patriotic Irishman will agree in the 
statement that Mr. Parnell had shattered Mr. Gladstone's arguments. 
So has every Irish Nationalist who attempted " moral suasion " since this 
century commenced shattered the arguments of his English opponents. 
But this kind of shattering is not only useless, but it is utter folly and 
senility for a people to keep on in such a course. The writer in United 
Ireland speaks of the " terrors of their dungeons." Now Nationalists do 
not for a moment undervalue the sufferings of several months in jail, and 
the agony of the plank bed, but dungeons are the punishment of revolu- 
tionists, not of agitators. There is no possibility that " moral suasion " 
will ever bring a man to the scaffold or penal servitude. So that after all 
the physical force men have to take the chances, and to suffer, if captured, 
every indignity which English warders can inflict upon them, as Irish- 
men have suffered in all our recollections, and are now undergoing in 
England's penal prisons. The farmers covering themselves with glory 
means not to pay any rent to the landlords. The sequel has certainly 
covered hundreds of them with the pains and penalties of eviction, and 
in suffering these for a principle they may call it glory. But to say that 
you can win a victory over your enemy by not stepping an inch outside 
of that enemy's law is a doctrine which would make people question the 
sanity of the man who preached it. That enemy, the agitators must 
admit, is most unscrupulous : they and the revolutionist both have proved 
it many times ; he will not hesitate to violate and strain his own law to suit 
his own purpose, and he is fairly well supplied at present with a perma- 
nent and comprehensive Coercion Act, which the Provincialists are feel- 
ing at present. The enemy will not listen to you agitators when you try 
to argue the point. In sober seriousness, then, these absurd as well as 
cowardly doctrines should cease ; preaching them to your unthinking- 
people must have a tendency to emasculate them. 

• The No Rent manifesto caused a sensation for a few days. Here are 
some portions of the text : 

" Fellow-countrymen : 

" The time has come to test whether the great organization built up 
during years of patient labor and sacrifice, and consecrated by the 



SCENE IN THE LONDON GUILDHALL. 383 

allegiance of the whole Irish race the world over, is to disappear at the 
summons of a brutal tyranny. 

" Mr. Gladstone has by a series of furious and wanton acts of despotism 
driven the Irish tenant farmers to choose between their own organization 
and the mercy of his lawyers. . . 

" You have to choose between all-powerful unity and unpopular dis- 
organization ; between the land for the landlords and the land for the 
people. We cannot doubt your choice. Every tenant farmer in Ireland 
is to-day the standard-bearer of the flag unfurled at Irishtown and can 
bear it to glorious victory. Stand together in the face of the brutal and 
cowardly enemies of your race. Pay no rents under any pretext. 
Stand passively, firmly, fearlessly by while the armies of England 
may be engaged in their hopeless struggle against a spirit which their 
weapons cannot touch. . . 

" If you are evicted you shall not suffer. The landlord who evicts 
will be a ruined pauper, and the Government who supports him with its 
bayonets will learn in a single winter how powerless its armed force is 
against the will of a united and determined and self-reliant nation. 

" Charles Stewart Parnell, Kilmainham jail. 

" Andrew Kettle, Kilmainham jail. 

" Michael Davitt, Home Secretary, Portland prison. 

" John Dillon, Head Organizer, Kilmainham jail. 

" Thomas Sexton, Head Organizer, Kilmainham jail. 

" Patrick Egan, Treasurer, Paris." 

When this manifesto was issued the thinking Nationalists came to the 
conclusion that the leaders meant fight of some sort to enforce its pro- 
visions, and that the document was couched in what they termed diplo- 
matic and expedient language. Reading between the lines of the 
proclamation reconciled its tenor to practical men. Outside of a lunatic 
asylum any more absurd and insane matter was never penned, reading it 
as the outside world did. Think of men who rank as leaders telling a 
whole nation that a government and its armed forces are powerless before 
the will of a people ! And yet some leaders in Irish affairs complained 
when this manifesto was withdrawn. Nationalists are often inclined to 
think some of our people are overgrown babies. Think of France disband- 
ing its army and telling Germany she is powerless before the aspirations 
of the French people and that the German Army counts for nothing in the 
struggle. Alsace and Lorraine must go back to France because the 
French wish it. It seems ridiculous discussing these absurd teachings, 
and yet they are being preached to the Irish people all over the world, 
and leading Irish-Americans, men of judgment, education, and ability in 
every path of life, give utterance to these silly doctrines. A short time 
since a prominent Irish-American judge at a social gathering speaking 
of Ireland said that all at present (November, 1887) was dark and 
gloomy — a great change from the high hopes held before them a little 
more than one year previous when Ireland was expecting to receive 
Home Rule. Some of his hearers could not help thinking as they listened 
to the words of this esteemed judge how little he knew of the actual 
merits of the Irish question. The time he alluded to as a period of 
roseate hopes for Ireland was in reality her darkest moment. She was 
near changing her position from enforced to voluntary slavery, which the 
measure he alluded to would have conferred upon her. She was near 
creating a single irresponsible despot to rule her, sent by England with 
the sanction and votes of the Irish representatives. 

The No Rent manifesto could no more be carried out without force 



384 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

than Irishmen could move their island to this side of the Atlantic even if 
they willed it. The National party, who still gave Mr. Parnell support, 
was taught that this manifesto meant something more practical than the 
farmer to button up his pockets and refuse to pay any rent. There will 
be men found even to this day who will contend that this refusal to pay 
rent could be carried out. It seems an outrageous attack on common 
sense to talk this way. The enemy would have nothing more to do than 
to arrest these farmers, sequestrate for their own use every penny they 
had in bank, seize all their stock, and by force take every penny they 
had in their pockets. Men will possibly talk of law. Law in Ireland — 
bosh ! Whatever Britain wishes to do she does. In Ireland law is and 
has always been the bayonet. The enemy only surrounds himself with 
forms of law the better to lure the people to their destruction. The 
whole agitation from its inception to its close could only be the dream of 
an illusionist. It is based on the monstrous folly that Ireland's rights 
will be respected by her plunderer. 

Behind all these noisy movements, with their meetings, speeches, reso- 
lutions, and public teachings that the enemy's bayonets did not count, 
there existed, as there does to this day, the determined and patriotic man- 
hood of Ireland, looking vainly for a leader to order their advance on the 
enemy's lines, to strike a blow for their country's independence. Thou- 
sands of stalwart Irishmen were ready to make any sacrifices on the altar 
of their country. The Irish government of Parnellites saw that some 
action was absolutely necessary ; they knew that the No Rent manifesto 
should be supported by a war of reprisals. But a public appearance of 
" moral suasion " they considered (rightly or wrongly) necessary to con- 
tinue to keep up so as to deceive the enemy. They forgot that in 
deceiving the foe they also deceived their own countrymen, who could 
not read the oracle aright, and more especially their great financial 
supporters, the Irish-American public, who knew absolutely nothing of the 
initiation of this war of reprisals on the cruel British enemy. 

It is sad to think that the necessity of preserving secrecy to more 
effectually deceive the foe should have been so effectively used since to 
aid the British in maligning, blackening, and misrepresenting the brave 
men who responded to the Parnellite government's call for volunteers, 
and some of whom gave up their lives in the service of their country. 

This book will narrate these stirring events as they develop themselves, 
and later on the curtain will be drawn aside and the full text of this red 
page in Irish history given to the world. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

(1881-82.) 

GLADSTONISM AND CRIME — THE TRAIL OF BLOOD — SLAUGHTER OF IRISH 
WOMEN AND CHILDREN. 

Excitement in Ireland — The Land League Suppressed — Colorless Politicians — Fright 
and Flight, but no Fight — Meeting in Palace Chambers, London — No Rent Banner 
Sustained — English Democracy Meeting at Trafalgar Square — Broken Up by Glad- 
stonites — Great Irish Demonstration — Forming on Thames Embankment — Immense 
Length of the Procession — England Already Invaded — Irish Speeches in Hyde Park 
— Miss Fanny Parnell's Ballad — United Ireland's Editorials — " The Time has Come, 
the Very Hour has Struck" — Cartoon, " Gladstone and Britannia" — "Judas Glad- 
stone" — United Irela nd's Last Words — "Were they the Braggart Froth of Craven 
Cowards? " — " Shouts of Victory" — Mr. Wm. O'Brien's Arrest — Massacre of Helpless 
Women at Belmullet — Ellen McDonagh Stabbed to Death — Murder of Mary Deane 
— Scene at the Bedside of Mary Deane — Exhuming the Body of Ellen McDonagh — 
Inquest and Verdict — Gladstone's Minions Found Guilty of Willful Murder — Glad- 
stone's Officials Cancel the Verdict — Sad Scene — Newcastle Chronicle Denounces 
Gladstone — Seizure of United Ireland — Winter of 1881-82 — Mr. Parnell's Parole 
— The Kilmainham Treaty — Gladstone's New Policy — Determined on Crimes Bill — 
Inner History — Captain O'Shea — Negotiations — Mr. Parnell's Letter of Surrender — 
" To Forward Liberal Principles " — Release of Parnell — Victory (?) — Great Rejoicings 
— The Streets of Ballina Drenched in the Blood of Irish Children — Seven Brutally 
Massacred — Little Patrick Melody Falls Dead at his Father's Door Step. 

The excitement was now at its height — it cannot be dignified with the 
name of struggle, for the blows were given only by one side. The No 
Rent manifesto caused more joy in the Irish ranks than it caused conster- 
nation to the enemy ; secure in the possession of undisturbed force, the 
Briton could despise all attempts to reason with him. The English 
masses looked upon the manifesto as an incentive to public robbery. 
The government of Mr. Gladstone responded by suppressing the Land 
League. Recently when the Tories, Ireland's other foes, were about to 
pass a similar, but not so drastic, measure the hypocritical Liberals were 
quite shocked. The Irish members held up the Liberals' speeches to 
their countrymen with approval and hope, ignoring their always brutal 
treatment of Ireland when in power. Mr. Gladstone's Lord Lieutenant 
issued a proclamation completely suppressing the Land League. There 
was not even the Tory attempt to consult Parliament. This edict was 
issued on the 20th day of October, i88i,and immediately took effect. A 
portion of this proclamation reads thus : 

" Now we hereby warn all persons that the said association, styling 
itself the Irish Land League or by whatsoever other name it may be 
called or known, is an unlawful and criminal association, . . . and we 
do hereby call on all loyal and well-affected subjects of the Crown to aid 
us in upholding and maintaining the authority of the law and the suprem- 
acy of the Queen in this her realm of Ireland. 

" Dated at Dublin Castle the 20th day of October, 1881, by his Excel- 
lency's commands. " W. E. Forster. 
" God save the Queen." 

The prayer at the foot of this proclamation expresses British anxiety 
for the spiritual happiness of the good lady who by a pleasing fiction 
is supposed to rule over them. No doubt there is great need for anxiety, 

3S5 



386 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and to remove from her path the many wanton and indelible bloodstains 
with which her garments have been besmirched by her various Ministers, 
but she has never had a Prime Minister who trailed her name into so many 
puddles of blood as the very meek, pious, and hypocritical gentleman 
who was Britain's Premier at this time of writing. Let us, then, in charity 
say (for he sadly needs it) " God save Gladstone " as a proper corollary 
to this infamous proclamation. 

The despotic suppression of the League coupled with the arbitrary 
imprisonments on the faintest suspicion of sympathy with the Irish cause, 
caused a great deal of panic among the frothy element of the agitators. 
These weak and nerveless men quickly disappeared from the scene of their 
previous blatant speeches. Some very prominent agitators were what 
people call with a species of eclat " on the run," and they did run with a 
vengeance. They even feared to make a stand in Britain, although the 
Coercion Act was powerless there. Their action can only be character- 
ized as fright and flight, but no fight. 

But to the credit of those Irishmen who were highest in authority, and 
who had helped to make the League so influential with the Irish masses, 
particularly with the non-agricultural classes — the artisans and 
mechanics of the towns, the intelligent and truly patriotic element of 
Irish nationhood — they were busily engaged in creating a fresh power to 
combat with the foe. Although they publicly sanctioned the most hate- 
ful and degrading of slavish doctrines, and mock legal and constitutional 
measures, they had determined on a patriotic and more manly course. 
Their continued attempts at " passive resistance" did not deceive the 
lynx-eyed foe, but it all but convinced their weak and timid colleagues, 
who would collapse at the very thought of hostility to the brutal destroyers 
of their native land. This element, so numerous in all Provincial move- 
ments, is generally led by demagogues of 'considerable literary and ora- 
torical ability, men who have great influence over the uneducated masses, 
and in moments of profound peace, when Ireland is silently fading away 
under the deadly influence of the invader's poison, they can be heard 
addressing the multitude in the most exciting harangues, symbolical of 
the terrible destruction they would in person hurl upon the enemy, if 
some far-away and imagined time or other circumstance of great moment 
had but come to give them occasion for the display of their martial valor. 

But the brains of the League movement, those who united knowledge 
with patriotism, were exercising their intelligence as to the best manner 
to meet the emergency forced upon them. This had been under considera- 
tion for some time, but the crisis was now in its most acute stage ; they 
felt the hour had come for Ireland to strike. Fortunately for the 
Irish cause, these men were invested with both power and authority — 
authority delegated to them not alone by Irishmen in Ireland, but the 
whole Irish race the world over, hence their actions were clothed with 
legal power, and every order issued by these patriots was lawful and 
should be obeyed by all loyal and law-abiding citizens of Ireland. The 
British Executive in Dublin Castle was and is an illegal murder conspiracy, 
and is only cheerfully obeyed in Ireland by the invader's myrmidons or 
else rebels and traitors to their native land. Obedience is wrung from 
the loyalist Irish patriot as the brigands enforce their authority on their 
captors. 

It is to be forever deplored by loyal Irishmen that the manly and 
patriotic stand taken by the authorized leaders of the Irish race did not 
continue and grow in intensity instead of slowly weakening, until it faded 
out of sight, and rampant treason supplied, and still supplies, the place of 
former heroic orders and whole-souled and determined resolutions. 

This destruction of the patriotic government of national defense 



GLADSTONISM AND CRIME. 3 8 7 

commenced from within their own ranks ; they had not the courage to 
openly espouse the cause they were secretly creating, not even the courage 
to preserve the dignity of silence, but under the delusive idea that they 
were deceiving the enemy they condemned the results of their own secret 
orders, thus aiding the foe's diplomacy without in any way convincing him 
of their freedom of association with the patriots. That there was no con- 
nection between these Provincialists and the men of action, the official 
Briton publicly pretended to believe, as he does to this day, to serve his 
fixed purpose — Ireland's depopulation. If they could not have publicly 
•espoused the manly action of " legitimate self-defense" and continued in 
the enemy's country to direct the movements necessary to put in practice 
this resistance, they could have, through secret diplomatic agencies, 
addressed the government and statesmen of every nation, and by public 
placards set before mankind the justness and necessity of Ireland's resist- 
ance to bloodshed and tyranny enforced upon her by a foreign people 
who had invaded their country. These Proclamations could bear the 
collective signature of the " Government of National Defense." Let the 
enemy try and find out who were the brave men who composed this 
government. He was for some time on this trail, but having satisfied 
himself when all danger to his rule had passed away, and when some of 
these men became valuable aids in his mission of removing the Celts from 
Ireland ; he preserved his secret, not even permitting his coercion organ 
the Times to know his secrets, although he is using this vile journal for 
the purpose of further degrading the men whom Ireland once honored. 

With the wealth and power this Irish government of national defense 
then wielded all this could have been easily accomplished, and negotiations 
entered into on behalf of Ireland with European lovers of liberty, and 
possibly an alliance with some powerful government whose interest and 
sympathies were antagonistic to the common enemy ; but in addition to 
the false diplomacy of moral cowardism they permitted the weak and 
driveling politicians, who were frightened at the enemy's vigor, to resume 
sway in their councils, and so destroyed what was full of promise for 
their suffering and brutally tortured motherland. 

The National Land League of Great Britain announced as an answer 
to Mr. Parnell's arrest a public demonstation to be held in Hyde Park, 
London, on Sunday, October 31, 1881, to denounce the despotism and 
high-handed tyranny of thus arresting the Irish leader and his colleagues 
by William Ewart Gladstone's orders, or, as he was then called in Irish 
•circles, " Judas Gladstone," and also for that Minister's summary suppres- 
sion of the League. 

Owing to the absence of the patriotic Irish members, who were, let 
us hope, engaged in more important work than public meetings, speakers 
were difficult to find, a panic pervading the ranks of the moral suasionists. 
The Land League Executive issued invitations to Irishmen not members 
■of the Land League to speak in Hyde Park at the forthcoming demonstra- 
tion. These Irish Nationalists were requested to attend a conference to 
be held in the Parliamentary chambers, Westminster, on the Friday 
evening previous to the great demonstration. The writer with others 
received an invitation to attend this conference. The room was crowded 
with a gathering of the leading Irishmen of London ; Provincialists and 
Nationalists alike were assembled. This was the room which the Irish 
Parliamentary members usually occupied when in consultation, but this 
evening they were all absent. Around a large table in the center of 
the room the members of the Executive were seated. Their secretary, 
Mr. Frank Byrne, arose to read a letter. This patriotic gentleman, 
since much spoken of, had been in the service of the old Home Rule 
Confederation as secretary in Mr. Butt's days and continued in office, 



388 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

much esteemed by all who came in contact with him. Mr. Byrne had 
served with credit and ability in an Irish company attached to one of the 
French regiments in the army under Bourbaki during the Franco-German 
War and was interned with his corps in Switzerland. He was a faithful 
and valuable secretary of the League, and from his long association with 
the Irishmen in England knew the proper men to further the agitation. 
Mr. Byrne had been an earnest and honest worker in the organized ranks 
of " moral suasion " ; he had to undertake a great portion of the labors 
necessary in organizing public meetings. The League lost a valuable 
officer when deprived of his services. When Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell 
accused him of betraying his political trust Mr. O'Donnell talked of 
what he knew nothing about, and made a false and cowardly charge. 
There has been betrayal, but it has not come from Mr. Byrne. 

The letter which the secretary read at the meeting was an advice to 
reconsider the indorsement of the No Rent manifesto ; the writer, who 
was Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar, feared the Government might suppress the 
Land League of Great Britain, a separate organization from its defunct 
sister in Ireland. The Nationalists present were surprised to hear such 
advice from Mr. Biggar, but supposed some timorous members of the 
party influenced him, they having caught the prevailing mania of fear 
and using the word " expediency," which has covered so many sins of 
cowardism. The Executive was about to adopt the advice given in the 
letter when one of the visitors arose and protested. He said it would 
stamp the Land League of Great Britain as composed of cowards. 
Whatever opinion men might hold as to the wisdom of the " No Rent " 
manifesto it was their united duty to indorse it now that it had been pro- 
claimed by their imprisoned leaders. It was their duty to show Mr. Glad- 
stone and his Government that Irishmen cannot be crushed by fears or 
threats of imprisonment. He concluded by proposing that " No Rent " 
should be publicly indorsed and inscribed on their banners at the Hyde 
Park demonstration of Sunday next. When was there ever a gathering of 
Irishmen that manly counsels did not always prevail if some bold-spirited 
speaker put it to them intelligently ? The meeting which a moment 
before was about to adopt the platform of denying and ignoring the 
"No Rent" doctrine of retaliation now became most enthusiastic; the 
principle of " No Rent " was carried by acclamation. 

After the meeting was over some portions of it broke into small social 
knots, and one could learn from the manner and the remarks of some of 
the gentlemen in the company that they were somewhat alarmed at the 
resolution come to ; they thought it very possible that it was a rash act in 
the then temper of Mr. Gladstone and the British people. But there were 
other people whose temper was just as unyielding and determined as Mr. 
Gladstone's, and had they possessed the power the subsequent events 
would have been very different. 

Some Irish Nationalists at this time formed the acquaintance of many of 
the leading English republicans, a small body of liberty-loving intelligent 
men. They tried to ignore, however, the national difference of the two 
peoples. So that extreme as they were on all social issues, on the ques- 
tion of Ireland having a separate national existence they were as intoler- 
ant as the most bigoted Tory, whose rule and doctrines they were 
organized to overthrow. Their hearers could not repress a smile at how 
earnestly they were supplying the very argument in their own persons 
which they were trying to combat. On this subject their ideas of union 
were that Irishmen should become Englishmen. In their ranks were 
many amiable and liberty-loving ladies. Miss Helen Taylor and Miss 
Jessie Craigen were prominent among these. 

This English organization tried to get up a special meeting of sym- 



GLADSTONISM AND CRIME. 3 8 9 

pathy with the Irish, and in condemnation of the Premier's policy. The 
meeting was held at Trafalgar Square on the Saturday afternoon previous 
to the Irish Hyde Park meeting. Mr. Gladstone's followers the English 
workingmen attended and broke up the meeting by physical force, dis- 
persing the few English sympathizers with Ireland who attended to offer 
resolutions condemning the Liberal leader's despotic conduct. An Irish 
Nationalist speaking to Miss Craigen a few days after the meeting, tried 
to point out the impossible course she and others in their goodness of 
heart had undertaken. Those men who broke up that meeting through 
bigoted intolerance and blind devotion to Mr. Gladstone are to-day 
hailed as Ireland's coming deliverers. Save us from national lunacy ! 

Next day, Sunday, the great Irish demonstration was held in London. 
The different sections of the procession began to form at Charing Cross, 
Northumberland Avenue, and on the Thames Embankment. Each section 
had banners with various appropriate mottoes ; conspicuous among these 
was the banner of No Rent. One procession composed of over one 
thousand stalwart workingmen informed the public by its banner that 
they were the " English democracy of the East End "; at its head rode a 
fine, stalwart, handsome man, with coal-black hair and mustache ; he wore 
a red cap of liberty a la Frangais. This English horseman was born in 
Cork, and judging from the profiles of the men composing the East End 
contingent, there was nothing English about them but their banner. Fresh 
bands of such Englishmen (?) arrived, and the procession began to swell 
into immense proportions. All around could be heard the genuine 
Cockney accents ; the h was either absent or in wrong company ; but 
in spite of their tongue they were as patriotic and warm-hearted Irish Celts 
as you could find in Connemara. Had the hills of Down or Dublin 
greeted their infant eyes instead of London smoke and fog they could 
not be more ardent in their sympathies, more earnest in their intentions,, 
or more self-sacrificing in their devotion to the sacred cause of Ireland. 
Grand old race of the green island of our birth ! how magnificent you are- 
in your love for the land of your sires wherever you may be born, for no- 
matter for how many generations in an alien clime you are Irish of the 
Irish still — Titans in the strength of your sentiment, midgets in the weak- 
ness of your practical work, which is led astray and turned off into many 
channels through the cowardism, the vanity, and the self-seeking honors 
of your leaders. If Heaven would but send you a man who would be as 
great in concentrating your physical blows upon your enemy as O'Connell 
was great in oratory and argument you would stand before the world 
second to no other race in the family of nations. 

There were seven vehicles from which the speakers were to address 
different portions of this vast multitude. Each vehicle or platform was 
numbered conspicuously on the outside. Men with corresponding numbers 
on tall staffs to be used as marking posts were sent on in advance. They 
took up their positions at regular intervals in Hyde Park. Each 
carriage drew up opposite its correspondingly numbered staff. Mr. 
Frank Byrne was ubiquitous ; he had a lot of details to look after and he 
performed his work, as usual, well and satisfactorily. 

Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell was the only member of Parliament 
present, and whatever has been the course of this gentleman's unpatriotic 
and pro-British actions of recent years he must be done the justice of 
stating that at this period he was unremitting in his exertions in the 
Provincialist programme of arguing with England. As the men of Balla 
responded to the summons to turn out in their thousands, the Irishmen of 
London were there in their tens of thousands. We have seen a great many 
Irish processions, from O'Connell's days in early childhood down to recent 
years. This Hyde Park demonstration was fully equal to any of them. 



39° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

What forcibly struck the speakers as they looked back from the carriages 
where they were seated at the giant procession as it passed Marlborough 
House was that there in Britain's capital was a huge foreign element, men 
who would of course unite with Britons on all social questions, but on the 
Irish national question they were totally distinct as a people. Looking 
back at the immense procession, it began to dawn upon us the power 
these men, if properly organized and led, could be to Ireland. Britain 
was already invaded by a determined enemy if this power was properly 
wielded by a man of brains. En route to Hyde Park there could be 
recognized Mr. Phillip Callan, M. P., standing on the steps of the Reform 
Club, a mere spectator ; he apparently had not the moral courage to take 
an active part in the huge gathering. 

In the carriage where the writer was seated were three speakers, one of 
them since a member of Parliament who made a very able address, 
another an English workingman (the organizers of the meeting wished 
it to be considered English), a member of several trade and social organ- 
izations, who had been a Chartist and marched under Feargus O'Connor, 
but our Chartist Englishman was born in the kingdom of Kerry. 

The English masses who lined the carriageway on either side listened 
to the speeches, but for aught these speeches affected them these good 
Londoners might as well have been citizens of that Eastern city in the 
Arabian tales whose inhabitants were turned into stone. The cheering 
and the applause came from the Irish processionists. They protested in 
their thousands, and no doubt surprised, and possibly astonished, the good 
Londoners by their enormous numbers. After resolutions were passed and 
strong speeches were delivered the meeting dispersed and quietly went 
home, and notwithstanding the magnificent and gigantic procession, when 
Irishmen awoke the next morning Mr. Parnell and his brother members 
and the rest were still in prison. 

Very recently there was another Hyde Park demonstration, which was 
called to protest against the proclamation, but not the suppression, of the 
National League, by one of Ireland's twin jailers, the Tories. The other 
jailer, being off duty for the present, is posing as Ireland's benefactor, 
and is loudly condemning his brother jailer for his brutal conduct ; he, 
good, pious man, never did anything half so naughty. Many of the 
kindly disposed New York papers — and indeed it must be said that the 
whole daily press of this Empire City is both kindly and sympathetic 
toward Ireland — spoke of this London demonstration as an evidence of 
English sympathy for Ireland, but only comprehending the Irish ques- 
tion from the cable and the Provincialists' misleading news sent over, 
they considered the recent Hyde Park meeting a demonstration of 
sympathetic Englishmen. This later meeting was a facsimile of the 
English (?) demonstration described in this chapter. United Ireland 
published a very spirited ballad at this time by the late Miss Fanny 
Parnell. This patriotic lady did not live to see the realization of her 
hopes. One of the stanzas is quoted : 

No more of the coward's silent curse 

No more of the beggar's cry, 
But a threat for a threat, and a blow for a blow, 

And a freeman's fearless eye. 
A call has stirred like a trumpet blast 

Our hearts at our slavish toil. 
And we know ourselves as men at last, 

We tillers of the soil. 

To use a paradox, how manly seems Miss Parnell's teachings beside 
her brothel's, or he who represents that dead patriot to-day. 



GLADSTONISM AND CRIME. 39 r 

United Ireland of October 22, 1881, published the following stirring 
editorial : 

" For two years the people of this country have been assembling in 
thousands, solemnly declaring before Heaven that never would they cease 
their efforts night or day until the curse of landlordism was swept from 
this fair island. Were those vows to God and man but the braggart 
froth of craven cowards ? Or were they the resolute promises of men who 
inherit the valor and the chivalry of an ancient race, whose souls neither 
fire nor sword, neither the gibbet nor the dungeon, could subdue to 
slavery. 

" The time has come — the very hour has struck, that demands the 
sacrifice, be it fraught with sorrow or with suffering, which brave men in 
all ages have willingly made for the divine right to live as freemen in the 
land the Lord has given them. ' Let knaves and traitors stand aside/ 
With or without them, and despite their cowards' counsels or treacherous 
backsliding, landlordism must be stamped out ; its very roots must be dug 
out of the earth and cast like rotten faggots into the fire." 

The cartoon issued with this number displayed Britannia, a hideous 
figure, in the foreground, Gladstone, with a demoniac scowl of ven- 
geance on his face, on her right ; underneath was the motto, taken from 
the Premier's speech in the Guildhall, London, "Resources of civilization." 

Since Manuel Cervantes wrote that powerful and admirable satire upon 
the knight-errantry of his age nothing more extraordinary was ever 
penned by a sane gentleman writing for intelligent people. Were the 
Irish people even besieging the enemy's fortifications and attacking 
them with clods of grass, and had their leader spoken of these missiles 
and their effect upon the ramparts of the foe as if shells from 
Krupp's guns were bursting over the besieged fortress, it would 
appear the essence of absurdity. But when such extravagant language 
is applied to an attack of not even sods of grass, but to that of hurling 
epithets against an armed enemy, we know not which to be more 
astonished at — the marvelous strain of thought on the part of the writer, 
or the credulity of the people whom he was addressing in the editorial 
columns of the leading Irish Provincial organ. What can be thought of 
a people who can select men of this class for leaders ? If it were not 
known that the quiet, determined manhood of Ireland had nothing to do 
with this fustian and gasconade, Nationalists would despair of their 
people. 

What time had come ? What hour had struck ? 

To depict Gladstone in hideous cartoons and hurl double-distilled 
adjectives at the foe — was this the hour that had struck ? When was it 
that men's souls were tried by fire and sword in the case of agitation ? 
When the time actually came that men did dare the "gibbet and dungeon " 
for Ireland, and hurtled something stronger than words at foreign rule, 
the newspaper containing this fiery editorial could find no words too strong 
to condemn them ; it went far beyond the London Times in its language. 
If Ireland is to be freed by "braggart froth " this journal has supplied a 
plentiful supply of ammunition. 

The epithet "Judas Gladstone" was then applied as to-day is used 
" Bloody Balfour " ; the agitators are brilliant in the application of choice 
names. 

The brave Boers never used such language ; they did not despise the 
strength of their foe, but neither did they exaggerate his power and 
cowardly condemn their own, but calmly and unflinchingly they faced 
the danger, putting their trust in Him who helps all brave people who 
manfully try to help themselves. 



39 2 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

United Ireland of the following week thus describes the then situation : 

"Our last word is to the Irish race across the ocean. Our gaze turns 
from ferocious England and turns toward the West. In the hands of 
Irish-America lies our fate ; upon the amount of assistance at hand for 
those who may have to endure eviction depends disaster or triumph. 
Now as never before apathy among our transatlantic brethren means 
defeat or death. Now or never one glorious effort on their part means 
certain victory. Our backs are turned to Britain, our faces toward the 
West. When our voice is heard again it will be in the shout of victory." 

The generous-hearted Irish-Americans poured out their money with- 
out stint. Mr. Patrick Ford, ever foremost in Ireland's cause, collected 
through the columns of the Irish World $400,000 besides the remittances 
sent by other channels. But there came no victory, but continued coercion. 

Mr. Wm. O'Brien was arrested shortly after the appearance of this 
article. A blank was left in the editorial page on which was printed : 
" Silence more eloquent than tongues of fire." Had the conductors of 
this journal continued silent while active work against the enemy was in 
progress results might have been different ; but the curtain was rung 
down by weak-nerved, vacillating leaders on manly action. 

Mr. Gladstone's agents were now using force in all directions. His 
murderous hirelings were supplied with a new bayonet keenly sharpened 
to kill off the Irish. One of the most brutal massacres that can be 
recorded occurred at this period, the savage and cowardly shooting and 
stabbing by Mr. Gladstone's hired assassins of helpless women and young 
girls. This Belmullet massacre will leave a stain on this Liberal Premier's 
escutcheon that the ocean cannot wash out. On October 27, 1881, there 
was a gathering of people at Grawhill near Belmullet. The crowd was 
composed of women, young girls, and boys. The constabulary received 
orders to strike terror into the people ; these orders came from Dublin 
Castle. They were told not to hesitate to slay. These brutal and licentious 
orders received the sanction of the hypocritical Liberal chief, then Premier 
of Britain, and with whom the Irish Provincial renegade members have 
formed an alliance — an open alliance with criminals, men guilty of the 
murder of their people. No rebuke ever fell from the Premier's lips to 
anyone directly connected with this crime. English apologists, if such ex- 
ist, must admit Mr. Gladstone had a criminal and guilty knowledge of these 
murders. After they took place the assassins were not in any way punished ; 
on the contrary, they were rewarded. The officer in charge of the enemy's 
armed men that morning determined to disperse the people that were 
gathering, and to scatter them in a summary manner. He ordered the 
British hirelings to fire a volley of buckshot into the crowd of women and 
children, and then charge them with the bayonet. He wished to try the 
new pattern sword bayonet recently supplied to them. Numbers of people 
were wounded by the volley fired by the British assassins, and screaming 
for mercy, they fled in all directions, closely pursued by these butchers in 
the foreigner's pay, who used their sharp knives stabbing and gashing the 
flying people. Numbers of women and girls were wounded severely, and 
they fled to their homes covered with blood, seeking concealment, for to 
reveal their gaping wounds would be followed by imprisonment under 
the criminal and assassin rule of William Ewart Gladstone. And along the 
road they pursued could be seen the gory stains of the inhuman and 
merciless Liberal Government of Britain, for a red trail — a trail of 
blood — marked the road over which the stabbed women fled to try and 
hide their gaping wounds. But two among the group could not fly ; two 
women, one an aged mother, and the other a fair young girl just blossom- 
ing into womanhood, fell in the gory trail of foreign massacre. Mrs. Mary 
Deane, a widowed mother, was shot dead by the volley of buckshot that 



GLADSTONISM AND CRIME. 393 

inflicted wounds on many other women and also children ; and a young 
maiden, Ellen McDonagh, was brutally stabbed to death by Gladstone's 
butchers' knives. And Irishmen to-day are indignant at being accused of 
association with murderers, and yet are standing before the world unblush- 
ingly the associates and friends of the foul assassins of these helpless 
women. There comes a shudder of horror over Irish Nationalists when 
they think that the men they once believed patriotic could stain their 
hands with the blood of Ellen McDonagh and Mary Deane by clasping 
them in those of their slayers. A writer thus describes the cold-blooded 
murder of these helpless women : 

" Not in Bulgaria, but in Belmullet, there has been holden a saturn- 
alia of blood. Mankind can scarcely realize this wanton brutality, but 
the evidence is before the world, and wherever a human heart beats with 
one pulse of human feeling that evidence will elicit the most indignant 
reprobation. Ordinary language is powerless to describe the cruel 
slaughter of nine Irishwomen by armed and pitiless men. . . 

" The scene was sad and solemn. The weird wail of the ancient race, 
an heritage from the lamentations of Zion, the heart-moving Irish keenia, 
was loudly raised by the women at the bedside as the coroner approached 
the homestead of the slain mother whom they mourned. What a loss was 
hers ! The dwelling was one of the most miserable I have ever entered. 
It evidently consisted of one apartment for the entire family, and even of 
this small space a portion of the lower end seemed cut off for pigs and 
cattle. The walls, round and low, were almost coated with soot, and 
from the door issued puffs of smoke. Of furniture there was scarce 
any, which revealed the poverty of this humble dwelling. One piece of 
furniture was honored : this was a rude poor bed on which lay the dead 
body of the slaughtered woman. Her three sons, fine, strong, healthy- 
looking young men, stood silently by her side. 

" The wound which caused her death was in her throat, one grain of 
buckshot having lodged, in the larynx, which was now black and slightly 
swollen." 

This murdered woman had lived with her sons ten miles from Bel- 
mullet, bringing them up from childhood strong, heroically, against hunger 
and sickness, and that misery which alien rule has brought upon the 
plundered Irish, but only to succumb at last to the buckshot bullet of one 
of William Ewart Gladstone's armed hirelings. That winter were pre- 
sented many scenes such as these under the peaceful blessings which 
Liberal rule brought to Ireland. 

Four miles away lay in graveyard earth the corpse of another of Mr. 
Gladstone's murdered victims — poor Ellen McDonagh. Thither went 
the coroner's jury impaneled to hold an inquest on the murdered 
remains of these two Irishwomen, one a young girl in the early blush of 
womanhood — Ellen McDonagh ; the other a quiet matron with the staid 
cares and miseries of Irish peasant life — Mary Deane. It was with a 
great deal of difficulty that permission to hold the inquest was granted 
by the satraps of foreign rule in Ireland. Ellen McDonagh's murdered 
remains had been consigned to their mother earth and had to be exhumed 
from the grave. The jury came to this quiet churchyard on their lamen- 
table task ; the brothers of the deceased girl assisted in exhuming 
the body. 

The coffin lid was raised and one by one the jury viewed the dead 
girl's face for identification. 

At the inquest Edward McDonagh, father of the deceased, was called 
to prove the identification of the body. The statement was short, simple, 
but pathetic. He said his daughter was stabbed on the 27th day of 
October and she died^on the 29th ; her age was twenty-two, unmarried. As 



394 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

he concluded his testimony his frame shook in agony, and to look upon 
the pale faces, tearless eyes, and suppressed anger and bitterness visible 
in the crowd of stalwart, poverty-stricken men around, no one could 
wonder at the deep gulf which lies between British aggressive and usurp- 
ing despotism and Irish national aspirations so brutally suppressed. 
Who could — what manner of men — bridge across this yawning chasm 
filled with Irish blood, safely bridge it over by mere talk ? 

Dr. Mullen testified that he " found a wound on the left side between 
the tenth and eleventh ribs. The wound at first sight appeared like a 
bullet wound, but on taking off the skin it presented that of a saber 
wound. I searched for a bullet, but could not find one." 

Being asked in what position the poor girl was when wounded, he gave 
this important evidence: "Her back must have been turned to the 
person who wounded her." He could not say if she was standing or 
recumbent when wounded. There were several other women wounded, 
nearly all with sabers. Most of the women in that Belmullet crowd must 
have had their backs to the armed men, the enemy's hirelings, who 
wounded them. 

The verdict of the coroner's jury was as follows : 

" We find that the deceased Ellen McDonagh came by her death from 
the effects of a saber wound inflicted by one of the party of Constabulary 
at Grawhill on the 27th day of October last. We also find that the 
police had not sufficient provocation to maintain them to fix swords and 
charge the people. We find a verdict of murder against Sub-inspector 
Stritch, he being the responsible party in charge of the Constabulary on 
this occasion." 

The same jury proceeded to try the case of the second murdered 
woman, Mrs. Mary Deane. They brought in a similar verdict to the above. 
In addition they brought in a verdict of willful murder against Police 
Constable Sullivan. Of course Mr. Gladstone's judges quashed these 
verdicts in the courts, for it is one of the peculiarities of British rule 
in Ireland that the bench is packed with partisan judges, sturdy pro- 
Britishers, men who have gone through a career of political and criminal 
service in performing their duties to the British Crown before their 
elevation to the bench. It is for political service they are promoted, not 
for ability. The ablest, most brilliant, and most profound lawyers have 
been and are passed over unless they first become the truckling tools- 
of a British Minister. The judges, as a rule, are members of the Privy 
Council. So that in their position as members of the Lord Lieutenant's 
Castle council they create offenses, proclaim districts, order arrests, and 
perform various other executive actions ; the violation of these ordi- 
nances come before them afterward for trial as judges. What a huge 
mockery — but a bloody one — is this alien rule in Ireland ! 

The organs of the British people, more especially that assassination 
journal the London Times, howl forth to the world that Irishmen are 
plotting the murder of innocent women and children. These murderers 
of Ellen McDonagh and Mary Deane know they lie — but they lie for a 
purpose. Their course of constant slander has its effect in this country, 
but the liberty-loving American people — people who love justice for 
justice' sake — see their infamies and persecutions not only in Ireland, but 
the world over. There is not an English woman or child that any Irish- 
man would willfully hurt or harm, and many of them would be safer under 
Irishmen's protection than under the care of their natural defenders. 
Brutal husbands in England have kicked their wives to death ; the police 
records are reeking with such horrors. From the day when Cromwell's 
soldiers transfixed Irish babes on their pikes and held them aloft in 
writhing agony in the streets of Drogheda to the cart-tail whippings and 



GLADSTONISM AND CRIME. 395 

pitch cap of '98, with the walking gallows, Major Hempenstall — a 
demoniac idea, this giant strangling his victims as he walked along — 
down to these murders of Ellen McDonagh and Mary Deane and to the 
Tory murders in Mitchelstown — what a trail of blood has British rule 
left in our fair island. 

Mr. Joseph Cowen, one of the few honest English Liberals who never 
believed in the sanctimonious Mr. Gladstone's Liberalism, in his paper the 
Newcastle Chronicle thus comments on the Belmullet murders : 

" If Lord Beaconsfield had been in office instead of Mr. Gladstone the 
Liberals would have viewed such proceedings as they are now taking 
through very different spectacles from those now in use among them. 
The hurrying off to prison of sick and suffering men, such as Sexton, 
Dillon, and O'Brien, on mere suspicion would have evoked emphatic 
expressions of disapproval and no end of effusive eloquence against the 
Tory despotism. Or if Ireland had been Bulgaria, Montenegro, or Greece 
the language used and the feelings expressed would have nothing in 
common with what are now in vogue. Nothing can surpass the wither- 
ing sarcasm which Continental politicians of every class cast upon this 
new phase of 'nationality interest,' as they call it, developed in her 
Majesty's Government. The men that have so often stood before 
Europe as the friends of every slave shivering in his chains are now them- 
selves putting in force as remorseless a despotism as is operating in 
Moscow." 

Mr. Joseph Cowen knew these hypocrites well. What he speaks of in 
his article of the Liberals denouncing Lord Beaconsfield if in office is 
happening to-day. They are denouncing the successor of that dead Pre- 
mier, Lord Salisbury, who is to-day pursuing the same career of remorse- 
less persecution which Beaconsfield would have practiced upon Ireland if 
alive and in office. The brutal Liberals are denouncing these crimes to 
get back to office. Their denunciations are hollow, and their promises 
false and insincere. 

The winter of 1881-82 was one of continued tyranny ; every attempt at 
public expression of opinion was suppressed by Mr. Gladstone's orders. 
The United Ireland newspaper was suppressed ; every copy printed was 
seized and the bookkeeper arrested. Detective Chief Mallon and his 
corps of bashi-bazouks held high carnival. Of the gross stupidity and 
blundering of this man Mallon there will be something to say later on. 
He was as brutal as he was sycophantic, and as merciless as he was incom- 
petent for his masters' service, which, through stupidity and blundering, he 
neglected, and possibly might have earned for himself a larger money 
reward if he had possessed the proper abilities, but of this his despotic 
employers were ignorant. 

The United Ireland was printed elsewhere, and numbers of copies of the 
supposed suppressed newspaper were circulated in Ireland. The Dublin 
newsboys always had some copies secreted on their persons, which they 
sold to those they thought they could trust. The little fellows with 
Irish instinct hated British rule, and felt delighted at helping to outwit 
the English, which they did not alone in Dublin, but all over the 
country. 

There was a song which satirized the police at this time much in 
vogue, and which angered these instruments of oppression to hear it 
sung. A little girl in Limerick was humming this ballad — it was called 
" Harvey Duff," — when a brutal Constabulary man crushed in her skull with 
a blow of his baton. But these things became of such ordinary occurrence 
under the "Grand Old Man's " rule that no one much minded the killing 
of a child or two. Miss Fanny Parnell wrote these interesting lines 01? 
the death of Ellen McDonagh : 



39 6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

A simple girl 

Fresh as a flower, pure as a pearl, 

Only a peasant's child. 

Dearly she loved her native wild, 

Life in its beauty upon her smiled, 

Till " by the order of the queen " at last 

In a bloody agony out she passed, 

This girl of whom I tell, 

To that cooling Night where all is well. 

Ellen McDonagh ! dark is thy grave ; ■ 

Father and mother in vain may rave : 

Stiff and stark thou art laid, 

Only a gentle peasant maid 

That loved and toiled, suffered and prayed. 

Yet rather I'd sleep 'neath thy churchyard stone 

Than sit with the queen on her ghastly throne — 

This throne of which I tell 

That is built o'er the flames of hell. 

The " by order of the queen " mentioned in Miss Parnell's poem was 
in reality the order of her Ministers, and the responsible chief under 
whose policy and orders Ellen McDonagh was stabbed to death was Mr. 
Gladstone. Yet to-day we find Miss Parnell's brother in alliance with 
this man. True, the English fairy king stole away his patriotic soul. 
Would that some Irish genie, leprechaun, or sprite could break the spell 
and restore him to the country of his birth. 

Mr. Parnell was permitted to leave Kilmainham on parole, an unprece- 
dented event with prisoners. The insinuating and crafty Premier had 
another plan in his prolific brain to crush the Irish by; this parole was act 
the first. A relative of Mr. Parnell's died in Paris, and like the tempter 
who displayed gold before the eyes of his intended victim to lure him to his 
destruction, so did Mr. Gladstone hold before the eyes of the imprisoned 
Irishman the tempting allurement of freedom. Mr. Parnell need break 
no promise that would be considered derogatory to his honor ; on the con- 
trary, the whole concession was to seemingly come from the Premier. 'If 
Mr. Parnell would only — ah, that terrible small word if — promise to sup- 
port Liberal rule in Ireland he would be liberated from prison. Mr. 
Gladstone knew how easily Mr. Parnell could make this appear a victory 
for the agitators, and that in the joy of what they (the Irish) would be 
taught was a victory they would not see the underlying purpose of 
destruction which the English Minister had in view. The death of Mr. 
Parnell's nephew supplied the necessary pretext to commence the pro- 
gramme by inducing Mr. Parnell to walk into this skillfully laid trap. 
Mr. Gladstone's humanity was supposed to be the motive for this unusual 
permission to Mr. Parnell to get a holiday from Kilmainham. 

When Mr. Parnell arrived at Willesden Junction he was received by a 
deputation of the League, who came to greet him on his temporary respite 
from prison. The secretary of the League, Mr. Frank Byrne, was one of 
the members of this deputation. How cowardly and unjustly has this 
gentleman been treated by his former friends of the League, to whom he 
displayed such self-sacrificing and heroic devotion. Treason and ingrati- 
tude, thy other names are agitators and Provincialists. 

Mr. Parnell had scarcely more than returned to Kilmainham when the 
approaches — which commenced during his parole — opened afresh, negotia- 
tions to induce Mr. Parnell to promise to support the Liberal party, were 
commenced and conducted in a delicate manner. These approaches to 
Mr. Parnell were as carefully set on foot as a man of such splendid 
intellect and gifts as Mr. Gladstone possessed, could do ; master of all 
the skilled diplomacy which is necessary to govern so vast an empire with 
its many conflicting interests, he so carefully conducted these negotia- 



GLADSTONISM AND CRIME. 397 

tions that his hand was scarce seen pulling the threads — threads as 
delicate and fine as those composing a spider's web, but a web in which 
he determined to enmesh Mr. Parnell, and through him the Irish people. 
If he were successful in this he knew he would enrage the landlord party 
and possibly some of his own friends, but this would strengthen his hand 
the more with the Irish people, who had formerly supported him, and now 
had gone over to Mr. Parnell. He thought he saw his way to get these 
detached from the National party. These men were the moderate Pro- 
vincialists of Ireland, men whose natural tendencies had always been to 
work with the Liberal party. Mr. Gladstone had no idea of giving up 
coercion, but he considered that the coercion which only imprisoned men 
on mere suspicion was not sufficiently legal in appearance for so amiable 
a Liberal to continue to enforce. He knew that the state of Ireland was 
such that a man with the extraordinary mind he possessed, and the gifts 
and tricks of speech he was master of, could very easily give plausible 
and apparently honest reasons to the English people and the world for 
the necessity of continued coercion, or, as he would express it, the " de- 
plorable necessity," which the condition of Ireland forced upon his atten- 
tion, that his duty to the law-abiding and well-disposed people of Ireland 
compelled him — reluctantly compelled him — to introduce a Crimes bill for 
that part of her Majesty's kingdom called Ireland. 

He also wished to give his Land Bill a trial under the supposed aegis 
of the Irish party. To induce the Irish people to accept this measure 
he was determined to procure an expression of opinion from Mr. Parnell 
in his favor and then he thought he saw his way clear. An event which 
followed astounded and surprised him, but did not alter his policy. This 
event threw certain men almost into his arms, and he knew he had them in 
a measure compromised, but this event also compelled him to show his 
hand sooner than he intended and undid the greater portion of his plans. 
He had intended to introduce this Irish Crimes Bill later in the session 
had all things turned out to his expectations. 

Captain O'Shea, a man of no political principle, was the medium 
through which this negotiation was carried on. His visits to Kilmainham 
became frequent, but so delicately was the affair managed that both parties 
could, without inconvenient witnesses, repudiate the assertion that any 
understanding even had been come to. That there was such an implied 
understanding arrived at — or, rather, what it should be called, Parnell's 
treaty of surrender — between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell, the latter's 
letter makes manifest. It is as follows : 

" Private and Confidential. 

" Kilmainham, April 28, 1882. 
"To Captain O'Shea, M. P.: 

" I was very sorry you had left Albert Mansions before I reached London 
from Eltham, as I had wished to tell you that after our conversation I had 
made up my mind that it would be proper for me to put Mr. McCarthy 
in possession of the views which I had previously communicated to you. 
I desire to impress upon you the absolute necessity of a settlement of the 
arrears question which will leave no recurring sore connected with it behind, 
and which will enable us to show the smaller tenantries that they have been 
treated with justice and some show of generosity. The proposal you 
have described to me, as suggested in some quarters, of making a loan, over 
however many years the payment might be spread, should be absolutely 
rejected for reasons which I have already explained to you. If the arrears 
question be settled within the lines indicated by us, I have every confidence 
— a confidence shared by my colleagues — that the exertions we would be 
able to make strenuously and unremittingly will be effective in stopping 



39 8 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

outrages and intimidation of all kinds. As regards permanent legislation 
of an ameliorative character, I may say that the views which you always 
shared with me as to the admission of leaseholders to the fair-rent 
clauses of the act are more confirmed than ever. So long as the flower 
of the Irish peasantry are kept outside the act there cannot be permanent 
settlement of the Land Act, which we all so much desire. I would also 
strongly hope that some compromise will be arrived at this session 
with regard to the amendment of the tenure clauses. It is unneces- 
sary for me to dwell on the enormous advantage to be derived from the 
full extension of the purchase clauses, which now seem practically to be 
adopted by all parties. The accomplishment of the programme I have 
sketched out for you would, in my judgment, be regarded by the 
country as a practical settlement of the land question, and would, I 
feel sure, enable us to operate cordially for the future with the Liberal 
party in forwarding Liberal principles, and that the Government at the 
end of the session would from the state of the country feel itself 
thoroughly justified in dispensing with future coercive measures. 

" Yours very truly, 

" C. S. Parnell." 

There is enough of internal evidence in this letter to show that there 
was a recognized treaty between Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone, and that, 
ignoring altogether his previous words and actions, and more especially 
those of his colleague Mr. John Dillon, the fairy changeling of what was 
once the Irish patriot Mr. C. S. Parnell consented to help the Govern- 
ment in every possible manner to put down outrages, thereby not only 
admitting there were outrages, but acknowledging that himself and his 
colleagues were able to suppress them, but would not hitherto. This letter is 
taken up with certain details about the Land Act which Mr. John Dillon 
condemned as a worthless measure and publicly stated in his speech in 
reply to Mr. Gladstone's Leeds oration that if he (Mr. Dillon) could he 
would have stepped between that act and his country people. This 
Land Act was a sham ; the arrears which Mr. Parnell speaks of could 
not be paid the landlord by the poorer tenants, who are enormously 
in the majority in the Irish tenant farmer class. The only persons 
benefited by this measure, which Mr. Parnell considered such a boon 
to the people, were the landlords ; they got payment from the Treasury 
for what was a bad debt — not in full, but one year's rent, which they 
never would have received but for the so-called Kilmainham treaty. 
The Land Bill extracted money out of the pockets of the larger farmers 
to pay law expenses; the reduction they got in their rents was not equal 
to the reduction in the price of produce. Their last condition was worst 
than their previous one ; they were saddled with an impossible rent for 
fifteen years and the whole business of arguing had to recommence over 
again. As for the greater numbers of the tenantry, what a farce it is to 
pass a law to relieve a man little beyond a pauper from paying an arrear 
he never could pay, and what utter folly to talk of reducing the rent of 
people whom a present of their holdings would not enable to live 
comfortably. 

One thing Mr. Gladstone did not calculate on was the display of tem- 
per made by his agent in Ireland, Mr. W. E. Forster. This man, stung to 
bitterness in carrying out Mr. Gladstone's instructions, held an intensified 
feeling of hatred toward the Irish people, and particularly toward their 
Parliamentary representatives. He refused to agree to Mr. Gladstone's 
change ; he had not the depth of character and duplicity of his more able 
and wily leader. He could play the wolf, but not the fox. Mr. Forster's 
resignation followed. But for this Mr. Parnell's letter to Captain O'Shea 



GLADSTONISM AND CRIME. 399 

apparently, but in reality to Gladstone, would have never seen the light 
of day. Mr. Forster read this letter en route from Kilmainham. When 
Mr. Parnell some time afterward read it to the House Mr. Forster 
noticed an omission, and a very important one. Captain O'Shea, who had 
handed Mr. Parnell a copy of it to read, had doctored it, at whose instruc- 
tions and by whose advice it is easy to guess. The omitted words are in 
italics : " And would, I feel sure, enable us to operate cordially for the future 
with the Liberal party in forwarding Liberal principles" — an announcement 
which when read in the House drew down cheers from the men who 
cheered Davitt's arrest and every atrocious act which Mr. Gladstone and 
his Government perpetrated. It was Mr. Forster who noticed the omission 
and supplied the correct copy to Mr. Parnell, who it should be remem- 
bered was reading his own letter from the jail. But this alliance did not 
take place ; this promise could not be kept in the face of subsequent 
events. Mr. Gladstone could not accept it, nor could Mr. Parnell 
give it. Mr. Parnell was saved for a time from his own weakness, though 
the men who saved him never looked upon the question in any such 
narrow spirit.* 

But what was the opinion of Irishmen all the world over? That it was 
a victory ; that, in the language of more recent date, " they had won all 
along the line." There are to-day thousands of honest, well-meaning 
Irishmen who still firmly believe that the result of the Kilmainham treaty, 
were it not for another " ruinous " event, would have been a great victory 
for the Parliamentary party. The writer remembers once hearing a 
Russian gentleman in Paris state that he thought the Irish people were 
a people difficult to educate in the intricacies of their enemy's party 
politics ; that they believed more in noisy outside display of their 
patriotism than the subtle, silent workings which are necessary to 
procure grand results. This so-called victory left the Irish people 
in the self-same condition they were in before. If the release of men 
confined in jail unjustly is to be called a victory they should celebrate 
one every month. But the whole race, or, rather, it should be said, the 
noisy section, were out with bands and banners and bonfires to celebrate 
their victory. The press in Ireland that was tinctured with a little 
nationality gave double-leaded headings to celebrate Mr. Parnell's release. 
The Irish- American journals who get their information from the leaders 
at home proclaimed it a victory. And the joy of the Irish people was 
unbounded at such glorious success. Ireland has had many of them 
since ; in fact, she receives one or two victories weekly. The arrest of an 
Irish Provincialist is a victory, and his release is a great victory. For a 
gentleman not to wear prison clothes — which he styles a degradation — and 
to persist in so refusing is a victory. When his clothes are stolen by the 
prison officials, and another suit spite of all the vigilance of the enemy's 
officials is smuggled in to him, it is a victory — a very great victory 
indeed. And the honest patriotic tailor who made these clothes, and the 
faithful Irishman who ventured to risk a few months' imprisonment to 
bring in these clothes, considered it a victory, and they all chuckled and 
laughed secretly at how they had outwitted Balfour and his jailers. And 

* Since this chapter was written, twelve months ago, Irish events have hurried the 
Provincial cause to rapid decay. The Tory commission is now sitting (December, 1888). 
The evidence of Captain O'Shea, Gladstone and Parnell's confederate in negotiating the 
Kilmainham treaty, conveys to Irishmen the horrifying news that Mr. Parnell was medi- 
tating surrender to the enemy as early as June, 1881, and this without the know'cdge of 
his colleagues. His overtures were, however, rejected by the British Cabinet. Mr. Glad- 
stone's wish that all papers in connection with Parnell's treasonable surrender in Kilmain- 
ham should be destroyed, which request was obeyed by the go-between O'Shea, illustrates 
the treacherous baseness which association with British Ministers breeds in Irishmen who 
enter the enemy's Parliament with patriotic ideas. 



4°° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

no doubt if it could be prudently done the gentleman who brought inside 
these clothes, and in so doing incurred the risk of imprisonment for the 
possible term of three months, would receive a public reception and be 
presented with a banquet, and his name enrolled. in the annals of fame to 
show posterity what great Irishmen and what daring Irishmen lived in 
the latter part of the nineteenth century. Alexander of Macedon, Han- 
nibal, Scipio, Julius Caesar, Turenne, the Prince of Conde, Washington, 
Nelson, Napoleon, Wellington, Von Moltke, and not forgetting the 
" great and only," all combined together, their victories by flood and field 
would not amount to the numerous victories which these Irish crusaders 
have won in their glorious mission of shaming England. 

Mr. Forster on the day of his departure hurried out of Dublin 
in the early forenoon ; no one in Dublin knew it would be his last as 
Chief Secretary, for political death was what he chose himself sooner 
than accept the wily way of killing off the Irish people preferred by 
Mr. Gladstone. He left for Kingstown and dined in one of the yacht 
clubs ; he afterward went on board the mail steamer ; his family left 
Dublin by the mail train in the usual manner. Lord Cowper, who also 
resigned the Lord Lieutenancy, went out in state. There were great 
rejoicings in the Provincialist ranks at the release of Mr. Parnell, and 
several bands turned out to celebrate the great victory, for the Irish peo- 
ple did not know that in making the " Kilmainham treaty " Mr. Parnell 
had made a most cowardly and disgraceful surrender to the enemy, and 
promised him his alliance and that of the Irish Provincial party — an 
alliance he could not publicly carry out owing to the current of events. 
Strange to say, the police had orders not to permit these Irish rejoicings ; 
they kicked in drums and beat the bandsmen with their own instruments ; 
they reveled in the unbridled license of wanton brutality ; for although 
Mr. Forster had resigned, a new chief was in office who evidently was 
about to repeat his predecessor's blood-stained regime, for the same 
peaceful and pious Liberal Premier ruled the land. 

Ireland had yet another cup of horrors to drink. A cup filled with the 
blood of young children. A cup which was held to her quivering and 
agonized lips by the assassin chieftains of foreign Liberal rule. In Bal- 
lina, County Mayo, a number of young boys, mere children, the eldest of 
them not much beyond the age of twelve years, went out in childish 
delight to parade with an extemporized band of tin whistles and drums, 
to celebrate the great victory (?) of Mr. Parnell's release. The brutal 
hirelings of Gladstone in their lust of blood, carrying out Dublin Castle 
orders, fired a volley of buckshot into the band of children and the crowd 
of boys and girls that followed the band listening to the music in innocent 
enjoyment. Whatever tunes the poor children could play were national 
airs which gave pleasure to their simple, poverty-stricken auditory, many 
of them barefooted and hungry, one of the blessings of British rule. 
The merry laughter of happy childhood was in an instant changed to 
screams of agony and pain, and with cries of fright and horror the 
children ran from the " Grand Old Man's " murderers and quickly fled to 
seek the refuge of their humble homes. But the brutal British-paid 
assassins gave chase, and ruthlessly stabbed, cut, and gashed all they 
overtook till their knives were dripping with the blood of these Irish 
children. One little fellow, Patrick Melody, aged twelve years, reached 
his doorstep, besmeared with his own blood, and in the presence of his 
horror-stricken father the murdered child dropped down dead. 

Oh, infamy of infamies ! the presence of the accursed and demoniac 
rule of the Briton in Ireland ! This bloody massacre of the children of 
Ballina took place on Friday, May 5, 1882. Who was chief of Britain's 
murder bureau in Dublin Castle when these horrid crimes were perpe- 



GLADSTONISM AND CRIME. 401 

trated ? Not Forster : he was gone. The man responsible for this 
cowardly and brutal assassination was the incoming chief, Lord Frederick 
Cavendish. A thrill of horror ran through the ranks of the Nationalists 
when they heard this news from Ballina. The new-coming British chief 
of the enemy's murder bureau had heralded his approach with the 
massacre of children : gouts of blood were on his crimson-stained 
feet as he set them next morning on the sacred soil of Ireland. The 
Ballina slaughter was known in Dublin that memorable Friday night. 
Irishmen felt that this continued cup of horrors had become too agonizing 
to bear any longer with impunity. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

(1882.) 

THE IRISH NATION STRIKES BACK — THE 6TH OF MAY IN THE PHOZNIX 

PARK, DUBLIN. 

Ireland Still in the Chains of Foreign Serfdom — Change of Front for a More Vigorous 
Attack — Bustle and Preparation in Official Quarters — The Military Prepare for the 
Pageant — The Guard Ship at Kingstown — Tars Man the Yards — Earl Spencer's State 
Entry as Viceroy — The New Chief Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish — The 
Cavendish Family — Enormous Revenues from Ireland — Immense Haul of Salmon — 
The Fish in the Blackwater Claimed by the Dukes of Devonshire — The 
Fisherman's Plaint — Hartington at the Park Meeting — Dublin Castle — Its Mem- 
ories — The O'Neill — Brilliant Procession — Lord Spencer's Reception by the Lord 
Mayor of Dublin — Scene at Westland Row — Soft Glove on Mailed Hand — Arrival at 
Dublin Castle — Reception En Route — Takes the Oath as Viceroy — Holiday-Seekers 
in Phcenix Park — Hawthorn Trees — The Polo Match in the Park — No Change in the 
Position of the Guards — Invincibles — The Beauty of the Scene — Tragic Rumors — A 
Dreadful Statement — " Impossible, it Cannot be True " — Eight Thousand Troops 
— A Stone's Throw of the Constabulary Barracks — Promenade Concert in the 
Exhibition Palace — Varied Scenes in the Palace— The Affrighted Figure — The 
" Turkish Patrol " — Revelers in the Outer — Incredulity — Gaiety Theater, Dublin — 
The Opera of "Maritana" — Trinity College Students — Strange Rumors — Opera 
Hurried Through — "Alas! it was Too True" — Oh, Horror, Horror ! Good Citizens — 
Supping off Cruelties — What a Sacrilegious Crime — Sackcloth and Ashes — Wicked 
People — Pious and Holy Ireland — Historic Tragedy — Morning and Evening — 
Night's Shadows — The Grim Specter Death — Confusion in British Councils — 
Mounted Orderlies — Troops Under Arms All Night — Restore the Harmless Land 
League — The Police — Their Nervousness — Mr. Parnell's Grand and Glorious Victory 
Ruined — The Bandsmen and Police — Midnight Newsboys — The Luxury of Con- 
quest — Uneasiness, if not Alarm — The Cry Audace is a Fiat Lux. 

The morning of Saturday, May 6, 1882, awoke the citizens of Dublin 
to witness the completion of their " great victory." (?) Earl Cowper 
and" his Secretary, the much hated William E. Forster, had departed ; 
the news of the resignation of the latter and his retirement from the 
Cabinet had evoked joyful acclamations throughout Ireland. The Irish 
rejoiced at what they considered the discomfiture and political destruction 
of their arch-enemy, Forster, little heeding — for unfortunately they do 
not give these grave questions enough of thought — that the same Govern- 
ment of their enemy remained in power ; that alien rule, with its iron 
and bloody hand ready to scourge them, still continued with all its vicious 
authority, prepared whenever it thought necessary to assert itself by cruel 
deeds ; that the master mind of Mr. Gladstone, under whose directions 
and authority the numerous horrors of the past winter took place remained 
still the controlling influence ; that the man of Leeds and of the Guild- 
hall, London, was still ready with his "resources of civilization" and 
his determination to make his " words resolve themselve's into acts ; " 
that not one single armed soldier or policeman was removed from the yet 
unconquered island of Ireland. 

The Ballina massacre of helpless boys had occurred the previous day, 
notwithstanding Forster's retirement. It could not be called even a 
cessation of the saturnalia of blood with which Mr. Gladstone's rule 
drenched this fair island. As firm and determined, as cruel and as 
unscrupulous, a man was sent by Gladstone to replace Forster. That 
the red earl would intensify and redouble the horrors of the preceding 

402 




DANIEL CURLEY. 

Died for Ireland, May 18, 1883. 



THE IRISH NATION STRIKES BACK. 4°3 

regime by the hangings of innocent men, was then undreamed of by the 
majority of the Irish people. That if in Mr. Gladstone's first agent's 
time "suspicion" haunted the land and hundreds were cast into prison 
-at the mere dictum of an ignorant policeman, the Irish were soon to 
learn that under Mr. Gladstone's second agent perjury would run 
rampant over the country, and that packed and drunken juries were to 
mock justice by their infamous verdicts. They were also to learn that 
manufactured perjurers would be created to swear away innocent lives, 
learning whatever lessons Spencer's agents instilled into them : these 
infamous and degraded wretches were termed by the enemy informers, 
although they never had any connection with the events they were 
instructed to swear to. The Irish people — or that portion of them 
represented by the boisterous element — did not know and could not 
have foreseen these things else they would not have resorted to joyful 
acclamations when silence and w'ork would have been the duty of the 
hour. 

It was no time for the hallelujahs of victory, but the sober interval for 
preparation to guard against the new attack which the enemy was con- 
centrating to deliver. He had not drawn off his forces, but simply 
changed front for a fresh and more vigorous assault. 

A slight haze hung over the Dublin Mountains on this morning of a 
memorable day in Irish history. Ben Heder (Hill of Howth) loomed 
grimly from behind the mist, standing there the silent sentinel of Dublin's 
magnificent bay. As the morning advanced the curtain of mist raised ; 
and the sun shone out in all the brilliancy and beauty of an Irish spring 
morning. 

All was bustle and preparation in official quarters ; the throne room in 
Dublin Castle had on its best costume to welcome its new occupant, the 
•coming viceroy of that imperial throne upon which the sun and misery 
never set, the messengers of destruction and light making a tour of the 
globe. 

In the different barracks in Dublin preparations were being made for 
the ceremonies of the day. Briton's red-coated defenders were burnish- 
ing up their arms and accouterments. Bit and snaffle in the cavalry bar- 
racks were brightened by the foreign soldiery occupying the city. 
Those quartered in Ireland's capital were to make a brilliant display 
♦that day to honor the incoming vice-king, and to overawe the natives of 
the invaded island by the martial valor of their appearance, the bravery 
and dash of their clanking accouterments and champing steeds. A 
guard of honor of infantry accompanied by a band was sent out to 
Kingstown. The war ship in that splendid harbor was covered with 
bunting in honor of the event, and her tars, in holiday uniform, were wait- 
ing the signal to man the yards and to hail the incoming vice-king with 
a royal cheer. The guard ship's guns were all ready to fire the vice- 
regal salute, that boom of British artillery which heralds to as yet 
unconquered Ireland the news that another master has come to try to 
rule her, sent from that island against which she has kept up in every 
generation — aye, in every decade of years — the unceasing struggle for 
native independence. The citizens of Dublin arose that day to witness 
•one of these gorgeous pageants which British rule, making its advent 
in Oriental pomp, gives so frequently to the gaze of Ireland's metropolitan 
city. 

John Poyntz, Earl Spencer, Mr. Gladstone's newly appointed Lieuten- 
ant in Ireland, had arrived, and with him came Mr. Forster's successor, 
to continue and carry out the English enemy's despotic rule in that 
unyielding nation. The Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, and 
the Americas and Empress of India had graciously consented to send 



404 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Earl Spencer as her Majesty's Lord Deputy to reign over, and represent 
his most puissant sovereign in, that portion of her Majesty's realm 
called Ireland, to lighten up the darkness of the lives of its people by 
the brilliancy of his presence, and to cheer them with the graciousness 
of the favors thus extended. Such is the cant of the Irish flunkies. 

The portfolio of office which had fallen from Forster's indignant 
hand was bestowed upon. Lord Frederick Cavendish, Lord Harrington's 
brother. The new ruler of Ireland, Lord Cavendish, came with special 
instructions from the master mind of hypocrisy and tyranny, the unscru- 
pulous and sanctimonious English Premier. He came to take charge of 
the bureau from which Ireland is plundered, reviled, and assassinated 
— for the vice-king reigns, but does not govern. But the new Lord 
Deputy who came to Ireland soon after assumed the reins of power 
by virtue of his position as a Cabinet Minister. 

The new Chief Secretary had that morning invaded the island with 
all the emblems of force, surrounded by the naked steel of Britain's 
soldiery, emblematical of the wounds and death this usurping government 
was inflicting on the natives of the country. True to the instincts im- 
planted in all of those men who came to Ireland on the same bloody 
mission of destruction, his first duty was to try how he could suppress all 
hostility to his country's rule in Ireland. The new chief of the enemy's 
murder bureau sought private conference as soon as he could with the 
permanent Under Secretary, Burke, a man whose official hands were 
imbued with Irish blood as had been each of his predecessors without one 
single exception. For to carry out this infamy, foreign rule — i. e., foreign 
murder and plunder — it is absolutely necessary to pursue a career of 
crime. Its existence in the island fills the air with horrors, and goes 
up in the shrieks of the dying, the hungered, and the ruined to 
the throne of Heaven, where a decree is registered for all these name- 
less crimes which its reeking presence has called down upon the 
heads of innocent maidens and sinless youths, and which has driven 
many to perdition. The agony it has brought to aged mothers and pre- 
maturely enfeebled men has been intense, so demoniac are its many 
infamies. What Christian man can conscientiously say that Heaven will 
not in time enforce its decree against these organized banditti and raise 
up a modern Attila to scourge the brutal invaders from the land, and to 
cause armed men to spring like the lightning's flash from the soil to strike* 
down those assassins of a nation. Raise up valiant men to meet them 
on their arrival in Ireland on their mission of crime, cutting off their 
path of infamy in the land where they should only find an open grave. 
They who rule by the sharp-edged steel should have their own decree meted out 
to them. 

Lord Frederick Cavendish was a scion of that house of Cavendish 
which, like many other families of Ireland's invaders, drew large revenues 
from that prostrate nation for centuries. Their rule over their Irish 
estates, like that of their fellow-plunderers, was exacting and unyielding. 
They drew ^"34,000 ($170,000) annually from their Irish serfs, which in 
eighty years of the present century, not including the added increase of 
compound interest, must have amounted to the enormous sum of ^2,720,- 
000 sterling, or $19,600,000. Think of this terrific robbery under the 
name of rent, and think of the starvation, death, and misery that they and 
their countrymen's accursed presence have inflicted on the Irish nation. 
The Cavendishes never paid one cent for these Irish estates which brought 
them the enormous revenues which they have drained out of Ireland for 
centuries. The earlier Cavendishes' title to these estates was the sharp 
edge of the sword ; they came in the train of a foreign horde of banditti 
bent on plunder and assassination ; they killed or banished the people who 



THE IRISH NATION STRIKES BACK. 4°5 

owned" these lands, laying waste with fire and sword the whole country- 
side. The horrible cruelties perpetrated by these English bandits live in 
the memories and traditions of the Irish race. 

The Duke of Devonshire, Lord Frederick's father, is not content with 
the enormous plunder he drew from Irish land, but in his rapacity he 
actually claims the fish that swim in the River Blackwater. 

The writer remembers one glorious evening some years ago at Cappo- 
quin, County Waterford, walking by the river ; he saw some fishermen 
hauling in a net filled with salmon. It was to his unaccustomed eyes a 
most gorgeous sight. The rays of the sun were reflecting back from the 
scales of the salmon the most beautiful colors ; millions of diamonds, 
topazes, gems of every imaginable tint and brilliancy, flashed from 
the scales of the noble fish, and shone round in the dazzling loveliness 
of fairylike profusion. On approaching and speaking to the fisher- 
men and congratulating them on their success one of them replied ; 
" Sure they say, sir, that it's the ould duke beyant in England that owns 
all the fish in the Blackwater, and, begannies, it's at law he is with us for 
fishing here. Och ! och ! the curse of Cromwell on the whole pack of 
foreign thieves, the robbing, maraudering crew. But, plaze God, we'll get 
rid of them one day." 

Lord Frederick's eldest brother, the Marquis of Hartington, held an 
important position in Mr. Gladstone's coercion Cabinet. Some years 
previous Lord Hartington was Irish Chief Secretary under the same 
Liberal Premier. During his term of power the Prince of Wales visited 
Dublin to be created a Knight of St. Patrick and be invested with the in- 
signia of that West-British order. Mr. A. M. Sullivan, Mr. P. J. Smyth, and 
other gentlemen of the " moral suasion " school summoned a public meet- 
ing to take place at the foot of the Wellington testimonial in the Phoenix 
Park. They had scarcely more than commenced to harangue the multitude 
when a police officer with orders from the Chief Secretary warned them 
to desist and disperse. Some distance behind the police officer were 
drawn up the stalwart members of the Dublin force, every man with his 
baton ready for work. Within sight of this scene of police and people 
stood Lord Hartington. He stood on a memorable place in that Phoenix 
Park, not likely to be soon forgotten. The blood of the Cavendishes 
fired his soul. He was indignant at the presumption of the insolent Irish 
to hold a meeting in the park and intrude their grievances while the heir 
apparent to that throne which is Hartington's fetich was partaking of 
the hospitalities of the Viceregal Lodge. 

Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Smyth objected to move ; they claimed the legal 
right of public meeting in the people's park. "Legal right " ! as if the people 
under the stranger's rule had any right but what their rulers condescended 
to permit them to enjoy. The police officer got into some angry discus- 
sion with the crowd and his cap was knocked off. This was the signal 
for an onslaught by the police on the people, and cut heads and bruised 
limbs testified Britain's idea of " legal right." The people were bludgeoned 
out of their own park, and the viceregal band no doubt accompanied the 
blows of their bashi-bazouks by the loyal anthem of " God bless the Prince 
of Wales." All this time, while the police were raining blows fast and 
furious on the flying crowd, my Lord Marquis of Hartington stood 
away some distance looking on with saturnine joy at the scattering, beaten 
Irish, and no doubt secretly enjoying the huge joke of the "moral sua- 
sionist " that Irishmen had any legal rights in Ireland. 

Some people say that these Cavendishes were possessed of all the 
virtues, and were most amiable, generous, and benevolent in private life. 
Possibly. So it might be said of Mouravieff, who sent to St. Petersburg 
the celebrated and oft-quoted dispatch, " Order reigns in Warsaw." He 



4°6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

had accomplished his purpose ; he had smothered all opposition in the 
blood of the people. No doubt there were man)- personal friends to mourn 
near the deathbed of the dying Spanish statesman who, when urged by 
the minister of religion to forgive all his enemies, replied with grim humor, 
" I have no enemies to forgive ; I have shot them all." So the Caven- 
dishes may have as many private virtues as public crimes. 

In due time the viceroy arrived by special train at Westland Row. 
There he was met by the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and town councilors, 
and presented with one of those fulsome addresses which degrade Irish- 
men. When my Lord Spencer, in all the dignity of his immense auburn 
beard, made his appearance in the street and mounted his horse, this 
news was flashed to the park, the roar of artillery gave a welcoming 
salute, the clash of the " present arms " and the military words of com- 
mand were heard as the band struck up, and with all the eclat and pomp 
of military display the viceregal procession started. The flashing of 
the steel as the sunbeams leaped from bayonet, sword, helm, and accou- 
terment, the many-colored uniforms of the staff, the waving plumes and 
clashing cymbals, all made up a gorgeous pageant to make glad the 
hearts of Victoria's loyal and faithful Irish serfs. 

The procession moved on its way through streets lined with soldiery 
en route to the Castle. 

Dublin Castle ! What a host of savage memories does the name of 
this bastile of English rule recall to the Irish heart and brain ! There 
passes through the mind a train of memories, the long, long catalogue of 
crimes committed against the native Irish within its walls by Ireland's 
merciless invaders — pages of history traced in the blood of the best and 
bravest of the Irish race ; and in fancy is seen the Irish kerne standing 
before its gates as he curses the Saxon when his eye rests on the head of 
his chieftain The O'Neill spiked upon the battlements of this castle of 
the Pale. As the enraged kerne exclaimed when he saw his master's 
head, in the language of an Irish writer : 

" God's wrath upon the Saxon! May he never know the pride 
Of dying on the battlefield his broken spear beside." 

Dublin Castle, your name in Irish ears symbolizes treachery, tyranny, 
and despotism. Seat of England's usurpation in Ireland and of English 
orgies, where the viceroy receives in borrowed majesty the humble slaves 
who bend their knee beneath the shadow of British power enshrined 
there. Where the Vice-King holds his mock court with all the plumes of 
of foreign splendor. Dublin Castle, 'tis from your council chamber 
goeth the edicts which shape into detail the chains forged for the Green 
Isle and sent from the capital of her foe, edicts that carry death and 
destruction to many an Irish home. 

As Lord Spencer's brilliant procession proceeded on its route the 
Castle tradesmen and the West-British parasites who live on their country's 
ruin tried to raise a cheer. While the procession was passing Trinity 
College the rising generation of sub-inspectors, judges, and stipendiary 
magistrates shouted with all the strength of their lungs. At length the 
new rulers reached the Castle, and the Lords Justices administered the 
oath. Earl Spencer was hailed with acclamations as the British vice- 
king ; he stands commissioned by foreign usurping authority to dispense 
what they term law and justice, and also whatever imprisonings and 
hangings he deems necessary to keep the unruly Irish obedient to British 
sway. Thus commenced a memorable and historic vice-reign, with every 
joy that could animate the British heart. 

The day wore on, and holiday-seekers went in all directions for 



THE IRISH NATION STRIKES BACK. 4°7 

pleasure. Few cities have such beautiful and varied surroundings for 
enjoyment as the capital of Ireland. 

In the Phoenix Park the young grass was fresh and springy, here and 
there speckled over with pink-eyed, white-rimmed daisies, dotted at occa- 
sional intervals with golden-yellow buttercups. The hawthorn trees were 
beginning to bud with promise of the wealth and beauty of those lovely 
and fragrant blossoms which we miss so much from our American home. 
Numbers of people were walking about enjoying the balmy air and luxu- 
riating on the springy turf. A polo match had attracted a number of 
holiday-seekers, who watched with interest the various changes of the 
game. All was quiet. Peace and joy ruled there but for the myrmidons 
of foreign power. Soldiery and police were to be seen here and there in 
groups, the armed enforcers of alien rule. Custom has in a measure 
blunted the susceptibilities of the average Dublin citizen, and he tries not 
to let his pleasure be marred by these agents of despotism. There 
was no apparent change in the disposition of the usual guards, who 
lounged about carelessly, but always ready, like the tiger, to spring upon 
their prey. 

An exile's thoughts pass away from the beauty of the scene as it 
comes back in loving sweet memory. What were the feelings of the 
Belgian peasants when they were rudely disturbed from their farmhouse 
at La Haye Sainte in the early days of June — June, sweet month of roses 
— three score and ten years gone by, or those of the more lordly occu- 
piers of the Chateau Houguemont ? Man in his cruel passions, retaliations, 
and reprisals, how he stains this fair earth. Why cannot each nation stay 
at home in peace and leave at peace its fellow ? The man or men who 
defend their native soil follow the nobler instincts which are implanted 
in the human heart, the invaders the grosser ones of plunder. On their 
heads rest the stain and crime of a sanguinary struggle / 

The sun had scarce descended behind the western horizon when 
a strange rumor arose among the citizens. Weird and wildly tragic was 
this awful story. Men shook their heads with incredulity. It could not 
be true. But slowly, very slowly and gradually, the ripplings of the truth 
came nearer and nearer to the whole community, gathering confirmation 
by the varied repetition of the same sanguinary tale. Eager tongues 
astonished the many wondrous ears that listened to the dreadful state- 
ment : England's two Secretaries have been done to death in Phoenix 
Park ! Impossible ! It cannot be true ! What desperate men could 
perpetrate so daring a deed? What, in the clear light of a May evening, 
within a short distance of the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks, filled 
with armed men, in the public park of a city garrisoned by eight thousand 
English troops, and filled to everflowing with fjolice and detectives whose 
special duty was to watch for political malefactors against the peace of 
England ? No ! no ! it cannot be possible ! was ejaculated by many a 
doubting tongue. 

In the Exhibition Palace, Dublin, all is gayety. There is held this 
evening within that glass building a grand musical promenade and a 
series of concerts. All the beauty and brilliancy which the burgesses and 
their wives and charming daughters can add to the dazzling throng are 
present. The beautiful melodies which float about the building are 
intermingled with the sweeter strains of Irish music, and rippling among 
these sounds come the merry laughter of the light-hearted promenaders, 
and the ringing, musical laughter of young girlhood, which is thrilling in its 
magic sweetness to the ear. All sounds are blended in one harmonious 
whole. The perfume of rare exotics and the fragrant wild freshness of 



408 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the spring flowers make redolent the atmosphere. At the refreshment 
counter the clinking of glasses is heard and the merry badinage of 
young men, who are exchanging repartee and compliment with the pretty 
barmaid who has served them. Fresh strains of music burst forth. 'Tis 
a march, and two or three military bands playing the " Turkish Patrol " 
go by. The last sound of their cymbals is scarce over when there 
rushes from the entrance down the main aisle of the building, along the 
line of beautiful statuary, a young man — perhaps a quiet-looking young 
man at ordinary times, but at present he appears to labor under strong 
excitement. His face is pale, his lips compressed, his eyes look strangely 
wild. He whispers something into his friends' ears as he passes along. 
They look astonished and incredulous, but grow serious. More people 
crowd round him. The gayety is hushed, the hall is quickly emptied, 
the annexes of the building give forth the revelers to the outer air, and 
a quiet solemnity takes the place of the recent jocund fun. One citizen 
addressing another says in a hoarse whisper, certainly not in tones of 
sorrow, " England's two chief rulers in the country are slain in the 
park." The other starts back and exclaims, " No ! no ! it cannot be 
true ! " 

The Gaiety Theater, Dublin, is filled with a happy crowd. Dublin 
citizens love music, and Carl Rosa's unrivaled opera troupe is in the 
•city, and this evening they sing our countryman Wallace's melodious 
•opera of " Maritana." The Trinity College students in the gallery are 
unusually noisy between the acts ; they have become a nuisance to the 
rest of the house ; their conduct savors more of the rowdy than of the 
gentleman — and yet from the ranks of these rowdies will come some 
of Ireland magistrates and police officers, to dispense and manipulate 
alien rule in our country. A strange rumor and whispering is heard 
among the audience ; the curtain scarcely falls upon one act than it is 
rung up again for the next. Several noticeable cuts are made in the 
music ; it seems the intent of the conductor to rush the opera through as 
quickly as possible. Some of the audience attribute this to the conduct 
of the students, but when they get out into the open air there is a 
•whispering, and anxious, solemn looks, and the tragic news is conveyed 
■.from one to the other, " England's Secretaries have been killed in the 
park"; and there comes back the response, "It is not true ! it cannot 
\be true ! " 

It was true — perfectly true ! There in the sight and presence of 
Britain's newly arrived viceroy the two Secretaries were slain. Was there 
no chivalrous Irish patriot to stand between them and the death stroke ? 
No ! not one, none of those who loudly express regret and condemnation 
to-day. Strange coincidence ! strange fatality ! near the very spot where 
his brother Hartington stood looking on as the police bludgeoned the 
Dublin citizens lay the dead body of Britain's Secretary as if in bloody 
protest against British rule. 

Oh, horror ! horror ! good citizens of Dublin. What can mean this 
fearful tale of blood ? Good Christian Irish people, tell us? You have 
been for a long time supping off of horrors and cruelties, till the sangui- 
nary cup seemed overflowing. You have seen your leading merchants 
and' business men go to jail without any form of trial or accusation, even 
young ladies sent in a despotic manner to prison cells. Your people 
have been shot down and bayoneted as it pleased your alien rulers ; but 
then— they were mere Irish that were slain. Nine women were shot down 
and stabbed near Belmullet by Gladstone's Royal Irish, but this was in 
furtherance of British law, and be ye obedient to those in high places, oh, 
patient Christian countrymen ! Old Mrs. Deane was shot in the throat 



THE IRISH NATION STRIKES BACK. 409 

and slain. Ellen McDonagh, a simple peasant girl, was stabbed to death. 
And yesterday, but yesterday, seven little boys in Ballina were shot and 
stabbed by Britain's bashi-bazouks ; one, a tender child of twelve years, 
expired at his father's feet. Why should Irish peasants have feelings of 
agony and suffering? Why should they wail their dead ? Such luxuries 
belong to the British who control the destinies of Ireland. How dare any 
wicked and abominable men violate their edicts ? The majesty and 
dignity of British law must not be questioned. Irishmen should draw a 
mystic circle to hedge round the persons of those who represent that 
almost sacred law, Britain's code of blood in Ireland. 

There have been no Irish patriots from the day of the Ballina and 
Belmullet murders to the present hour to publicly state that if they 
were present they would stand between Mary Deane and her buckshot 
assassins, between Ellen McDonagh and the butchers who stabbed her 
to death, between Patrick Melody and his murderous assailants who 
wantonly robbed him of his young life. No ! not one ! 

But when we reflect that these English killings are of too frequent 
occurrence to surprise the modern leaders of our so-called Nationalists, 
they know full well that British crimes make no preceptible noise in this 
busy world. No one should wonder at these century-old stories of 
English slaying the mere Irish. But to kill a Chief Secretary of 
England's ! What a sacrilegious crime ! What blasphemy against 
British rule ! Oh, ye who are Irish ! put on sackcloth and ashes and 
never cease bewailing this wicked act ! Think of how it has put back 
your country for at least one century, possibly for two centuries ! It has 
stopped all the beneficent intentions of that pure-minded British states- 
man who is always pouring forth his sympathy for Ireland when he 
finds himself in the cold shades of opposition. Such is the prevailing 
cant of the times, the marvelous hypocrisy created by tyranny. 

It is said by some wicked people that no nation on God's footstool 
would submit to such outrages as you Irish have borne so patiently with- 
out at least, if you could do no more, wiping out of existence the head 
and front of this deep offending in the persons of the enemy's highest 
officials. They say that the Americans, the Germans, the French, the 
Italians, or even the English themselves would not quietly submit to such 
intolerable tyranny and continued degradation. Let your scoffers, if they 
so will it, talk on in this wicked strain ; good Irishmen, take no notice. 
These nations are not so pious and holy as Ireland. They have not 
as nations learned to practice the Christian maxim when smitten on one 
cheek to present the other to the foe. They unfortunately have not your 
humility and meekness, blessed isle of saints. 

What a day for British rule in Ireland ! The morning saw the invad- 
ers brimful of hope and joy for the coming day, preparing for a grand 
pageant : caparisoned housings on the mettled steeds that were to bear 
such precious freight, the glitter of gold lace and steel, flaunting feathers 
and all the trappings and pomp of state. 

Night's shadow had scarce fallen when hark ! the alarm and the panic ! 
The grim specter death has come among them. There are mounted 
orderlies riding in hot haste, carrying messages to the regimental com- 
manders in the different barracks of the now fully excited city. These 
orders are to the British colonels to have their men under arms all night. 
They expect they know not what. There is an unseen foe in their midst 
that bodes no good to British rule in Ireland. They begin again to 
realize that they are quartered in a hostile city, among as yet an uncon- 
quered people. "When the truth cannot be clearly made out, what is 
false is increased through fear." The very absence of knowledge magni- 



410 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

fied British terrors. All was confusion in their councils. What matters 
now the arrest of men who only protest and peacefully ask for home- 
made laws ? The " suspect " and " village tyrant " of yesterday becomes 
the very guardian, almost the savior, of Castle rule to-day. What have 
their resistance been ? Mere words that pale into insignificance in the 
presence of this mysterious, dreadful, and daring attack. 

Restore the harmless Land League so wantonly suppressed. Can it 
be that from its grave came this spectral visitor to carry out this fearful, 
determined deed ? As one walks through the streets of the city he can- 
not help marking the pallid faces of the police who execute British mis- 
deeds upon the mere Irish. Note how nervously and carefully they tread 
their way, as if some mystic foe was about to spring upon them from some 
unseen hiding place. This morn, this very morn, these men stopped some 
boys parading as bandsmen, who were rejoicing over the victory of Mr. 
Parnell's release and playing national music. These employees of the 
invader in the unbridled license and wantonness of power clubbed the 
bandsmen and smashed their instruments. To-night how changed and 
timid are their uncertain movements. What unusual midnight cry is 
that? It is the newsboy shouting the exciting news; his papers are 
quickly bought up by eager purchasers. For the first time in the recol- 
lection of the Dublin press Saturday midnight papers are issued. 

Let this daring act be placed in its proper place in history, at least 
by Irishmen; for what the enemy has called "crime "read in golden 
letters patriotism and virtue. God bless and strengthen the arm of 
every brave patriot who will destroy the fomentors of infamy in his native 
land. It was an act of daring ; by such acts are prostrate nations 
ennobled. 

All sublime conquests are more or less the reward of daring. That 
it was not enough that Parnell should foresee some such historic event, 
when on Monday, September 17, 1877, in Kilmallock he said that " it is 
our duty not to conciliate, not to beg, not to crave from England. In 
whatever field we struggle, whatever weapons we en/J>loy, let us show we 
are patriotic Irishmen : " That O'Brien should preach it when he penned 
the fiery words, " The brave descendants of an ancient race, whose souls 
neither fire nor sword, neither the gibbet nor the dungeon, could subdue 
to slavery. The time has come — the very hour has struck, that demands 
the sacrifice, be it fraught with sorrow or with suffering : " That Biggar 
should prepare for it when in Parnell's presence at the Cork banquet he 
publicly stated "that if the constitutional course they were then pursuing 
in Parliament failed in its objects he thought Ireland might be able to 
produce another Hartman, and probably with better results." All honor 
to these men's noble sentiments. That it was not enough that Parnell 
should foresee it, that O'Brien should preach it, nor that Biggar should 
prepare the public mind to receive it : the Invincibles must dare it. As 
a great revolutionary writer expresses it: "The cry ' An dace' is a 
fiat lux ! " 

The onward march of the human race requires that the heights 
around it should be ablaze with noble and enduring lessons of courage. 
Deeds of daring dazzle history, and form one of the guiding lights of 
man. The dawn dares when it rises. To strive, to brave all risks, to 
persist, to persevere, to be faithful to yourself, to grapple hand to hand 
with destiny, to surprise defeat with the little terror it inspires, at one 
time to confront unrighteous power, at another to defy intoxicated 
triumph, to hold fast, to hold hard — such is the example which the nations 
need, and the light that electrifies them. The same puissant lightning 
darts from the torch of Prometheus and the steel blade of Joseph Brady. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

(1882.) 

MAY 7TH IN DUBLIN — SCENES AND INCIDENTS AFTER THE TRAGEDY. 

Sunday in Dublin — Feverish, Anxious City — Groups of Men Discuss the Events of Last 
Night Outside the Churches — Scenes in the Phoenix Park — The People Remove the 
Soil as a Memento — Various Opinions of the Citizens — " If it had been Forster" — 
"Not Personal Revenge" — "British Rule in Ireland Struck Down" — The Police 
and the Taverns — Temporary Arrests — Britain's Secret Police — Sailors of the Royal 
Navy Dragging the Liffey — British Government Proclamation — Reward of $50,000 — 
Proclamation of Some of the League Leaders — Surprise among the People — Conster- 
nation Reading the Irish Proclamation — Knitted Brows and Gathering Scowls of 
Wrath — "Is that the Way they Thank Gladstone for Sending them to Prison" — 
United Ireland's Condemnation — Haphazard Arrests — The London Merchant and 
the Police Sergeant — Rising in the City Expected — " Keep by the Tram Lines" — 
Arrests in Newcastle-on-Tyne — European Politicians and Statesmen — Opinions of 
the European Press — Victor Hugo's Rappel — " A War of Independence Seems 
Foreshadowed" — The Mot d'Ordre — "Continue the Struggle without Truce or 
Mercy " — Irish Lack of Political Education — Organ of Prince Bismarck, Berlin National 
Zeitung — " Till their Country is Sundered from Great Britain " — Henri Rochefort's 
Intransigeant — " Cannon the Ultima Ratio of Kings, the Dagger the Ultima Ratio of 
Subjects" — Austrian Journals — Vienna Presse — " Wonder how Men Could Escape 
from so Public a Place " — The Citizen — " Two Organizations in Ireland " — Citoyen, 
Paris — " Ministers Determined to Try Trickery " — " Triumph of Independent Ireland 
is Certain " — " Ireland in Broad Daylight does More for Revolution than Nihilists who 
Hide Underground " — " Irishmen Strike Openly and Straight at the Heart" — Russian 
Semi-official Journal, Golos, St. Petersburg — " Movement is Political and Not Entirely 
Agrarian " — ' ' Secret Party Aims at the Overthrow of English Authority " — Bataille, 
France — "Time is Past for Political Jugglery" — " Resolve to Reach the Goal, Irish 
Independence " — Marseillaise, France — ' ' No longer Landlords " — " They Strike Down 
the Queen's Delegates " — " What Friend of Humanity Would Think of Blaming her 
for it ? " — Most Serious Act Since '98 — Irishmen Lack Moral Courage — Secretly Ap- 
prove, Openly Denounce — The Dublin Irishman — " The English Began the Bloody 
Struggle" — " First Declared War against Ireland" — "War Brought Down to our 
Own Times " — London Times — " Not only Brutal, but Defiant and Insolent " — " But 
those who Examined the Scene can Understand this Fact " — " All Dublin and Others 
who Examined the Locality See what it Means" — "Secret Societies Challenge 
Whole Power of the Executive." 

The morning of Sunday, May 7, dawned on a feverish, anxious city. 
The cry of the newsvenders giving the latest news of last night's tragedy 
could be heard in every thoroughfare. For the first time since men 
communicated their ideas to each other by the medium of the printing 
press Dublin City published Sunday newspapers, and each edition was 
bought up as fast as it came from the publishing room. Every rumor 
and canard was eagerly discussed, and the information circulated by the 
British authorities, no matter how absurd, found its way into the city 
journals. Groups of men could be seen outside the different churches 
discussing the gravity of the situation. Various opinions were expressed 
and debated by these good citizens. Among the small Sunday gatherings 
of the people groups of men who had just come from divine service in 
their churches could be heard to express themselves approvingly of the 
tragic deed of the night before. Though in some cases they spoke 
guardedly, yet the smile of joy that lighted up their faces and flashed 
from their eyes revealed the depth of their feelings. There are peculiar 
mannerisms by which Irishmen convey their real sentiments to each other 

411 



412 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

even though their tongues speak differently. This gift is not possessed by 
any other people. It was born of the long ages of slavery, which has so 
eaten into their souls that even the best and bravest and most daring of 
the race unconscious to themselves are its possessors. Yet though sur- 
rounded by a cordon of spies and detectives of the English enemy, their 
pent up feelings will burst forth ; too often unguardedly they break the 
walls of discretion. In Dublin City, upon that memorable Sunday, men 
could be heard to express themselves in strong approval of the great 
event of the night before, words that would imperil their liberty if heard 
by any of the invader's myrmidons. Brave citizens, worthy sons of a 
nation ! not a miserable province, as cowardly men, who presume to call 
themselves Nationalists, would make you — when will you shake off your 
credulity ? When will you take back the right to control your destiny, 
which you have so long surrendered to men, many of whom, like ^Esop's 
Donkey, parade as lions ? Artisans, mechanics, students, and toilers in 
Ireland's metropolis, it is time that you, who were wont to be so fervent, 
should throw off the toils which mock you, and show yourselves what you 
have ever been — the vanguard of the party of action, even though sur- 
rounded by so many willing slaves ! 

The Dublin carmen that Sunday brought numerous visitors to the 
Phoenix Park. A kind of mysterious fascination drew the people there ; 
crowds walked over the brilliant greensward, and groups in all direc- 
tions were discussing the question of the hour. With superstition be- 
longing to many of the people, in their love for mementoes, the 
early comers had removed portions of the earth where the slain British 
Secretaries were found, and by midday a perceptible hollow was guarded 
by the police to stop the visitors from relic hunting. Not far from this 
place a small group of serious, earnest men, apparently mechanics of the 
most intelligent class, were listening to a speaker who was giving his 
views upon the situation. He was interrupted by an elderly man, who 
exclaimed : " If it had been old Buckshot Forster I could easier under- 
stand it. The whole affair is a puzzle to me ; this man Cavendish had no 
time to do any harm. And if what we have heard the last few days is 
true Gladstone was going to remove all coercion and give us back our 
Parliament in a few months. All our members are rejoicing over the 
great victory, and this is a strange way to celebrate it in Dublin. I tell 
you it will bring ruin upon the country." 

The first speaker replied : " Let us look at it from the standpoint of 
the men engaged in this daring deed, that is, if they were Nationalists' 
and not Orangemen, as some people say. From their view they would not 
agree with you. Had they killed Forster the world would have said it was 
the act of personal and political revenge ; the lesson read to England 
would be, ' Send us kindly disposed Chief Secretaries and we will cor- 
dially receive them ; it is not your rule we quarrel with, but Forster's 
tyranny.' The slaying of the British Secretary Cavendish was not an 
act of personal revenge. He had never been identified with any action 
that could create this feeling. In his person the office of Britain's chief 
officer was struck down. It was British rule in any manner which these 
men protested against. As to the Under Secretary, Burke, he was a 
tyrant, but, after all, a mere tool in the hands of his chief. He could 
have been easily killed at any time ; a man who went about the city so 
much and who moved in gay circles must have given many opportunities 
to his foes. I do not believe either man was slain accidentally. This 
matter must have been as well planned as it was successfully carried out. 
It was a brave and daring action in the presence of so many guards ; 
the slightest hitch would have surrounded the actors with numerous foes. 
The suddenness of the attack and the unusual weapons must have para- 




The surgeon 



HAMILTON WILLIAMS, M. D. 
whom it is said purchased the weapons used in the Phcenix Park 



SCENES AND INCIDENTS AFTER THE TRAGEDY. 4*3 

lyzed their British guardians, and the men where gone when they came to 
their reason. The papers are trying to make it appear that these men 
were not guarded ; that is the British policy to say so now ; but anyone 
who knows anything of the park yesterday evening must be aware there 
were armed police and detectives scattered round. It is not convenient 
for them to acknowledge this fact, and no doubt with the many distorted 
statements that will hereafter be told of this tragedy this story will be 
published and believed. Had one shot been fired how quickly these scat- 
tered guardians of British rule would have clustered round, and in almost 
a twinkling the Constabulary would be on the scene with shotted rifles and 
fixed bayonets, and these men would have been surrounded, captured, or 
shot down. These probabilities must have been in the mind of their 
leader ; these men must have gone there prepared to take all chances, 
death or capture — which would mean death — or else a daring and, for 
them, fortunate escape. What puzzles me is the complete mystery which 
shrouds the whole affair ; all seems imaginary speculation, and there 
appears to be no official information of any kind." The speakers con- 
tinued their debate. Everywhere the subject was discussed ; avoid it how 
one might it was continually introduced ; it was an event which perplexed 
and caused great excitement in the public mind. 

The guardians of that crime British rule in Ireland, i. e., the police, 
were given orders on that Sunday to guard the exterior of taverns and 
every place of public resort. Any visitors to the Dublin taverns were placed 
under temporary arrest and their persons searched, the police carefully 
reading every scrap of printed or written matter found, seizing anything 
which their imaginations could distort into suspicious documents, and 
taking the names and addresses of the men arrested. To carry this out 
effectually was a very difficult task where these employees of the alien 
power have reason to suspect nine-tenths of the inhabitants of a city 
with over two hundred thousand inhabitants. 

On Monday morning those not engaged in any employment — and 
these are numerous in every Irish city and town — could see the steam 
launch belonging to the British warship stationed at Kingstown harbor 
sail up the Liffey. This launch had on board the most approved grappling 
irons. The detectives in the employ of the enemy were trying to recover 
a little of their lost prestige. They wished the public to believe that they 
were in possession of information of great moment, and to further the 
ends of what they called "justice" they were keeping it from the press. 
They allowed it to be published that they knew the men engaged in the 
tragedy, and that they held important clews as to their whereabouts. 
These they described as four fierce-looking men in the garb of sailors, of 
American appearance. They also stated that these desperadoes when 
leaving the park killed the driver and the horse, and to conceal and leave 
no traces of their crime they threw car, horse, and driver into the Liffey. 
It was to recover these and to grapple and bring to light this necessary 
evidence that the seamen of the Royal Navy came from Kingstown in 
their launch. But it so came that although the British tars worked very 
diligently for several days they were not rewarded by success in their 
search. Neither vehicle, horse, nor man could be found. But the enemy 
insisted he was well informed, and permitted to be published portraits of 
the men they were in search of in the London illustrated press. 

Of course it was enough for these men to be enemies of British rule 
in Ireland to satisfy the English public that they must be hideous-looking 
individuals. The portraits published were of the lowest type of English 
civilization, and were believed to be authentic by the British masses. 

Early on Monday morning Dublin City was placarded with two British 
proclamations : one bearing the signature of the red earl, chief of 



414 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Britain's banditti in Ireland, the other signed by Charles Stewart Parnell, 
lately the beloved and respected Irish Provincial leader, but who on this 
occasion played the part of chief of Ireland's cowards, the offerer of con- 
solation and assistance to Ireland's brutal and unrelenting foes. Earl 
Spencer's proclamation bore the royal arms of the neighboring island at 
the top, which was sufficient to show even Irish patriot loyalists who could 
not even read (if there are any of these in Dublin) that this document 
was both illegal and criminal. The proclamation of the Irish leaders 
could not bear the arms of Ireland without armed force to protect it. 
But this proclamation of theirs was an act of treason against Ireland, for 
it expressed sympathy toward Ireland's invader and enemy, and con- 
demned the secret armed soldiers of Ireland who struck down the new 
chief of these invading foes.* 

The proclamation of the Dublin Castle officials commenced with the 
usual u Whereas" that certain persons not having the fear of God and 
British displeasure before them did maliciously slay and murder in the 
Phoenix Park, Dublin, on Saturday evening, May 6, 1882, Frederick 
Cavendish, known as Lord Frederick Cavendish, her Majesty's Chief 
Secretary of State for that portion of the United Kingdom called Ireland, 
and also Thomas H. Burke, her Majesty's Under Secretary of State for 
the same portion of the United Kingdom : This to inform all good people 
that the sum of ten thousand pounds sterling (fifty thousand dollars) 
would be paid to anyone who would give such information as would 
lead to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator or perpetrators of 
this murder, and also the further reward of five thousand pounds was 
offered to anyone who would give private information, and a free pardon 
was guaranteed to any such informant other than the actual perpetrators 
of the crime. " Done at Dublin Castle, May 8, 1882, in the forty-fifth 
year of the reign of her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria." (Signed) 
Spencer. 

It was the first proclamation of this inauspicious and blood-stained 
vice-reign. 

The West-British proclamation was written by a man in frenzy and 
panic, a politician, not a patriot, and who compelled the frightened Mr. 
Parnell to affix his signature to the document without giving him scarce 
time to read what was about to go before the world. This we have 
been credibly informed of from a source that knew of this unfortunate 
and disastrous occurrence, the first downward step that has removed these 
men so far from the Irish patriot ranks. It was posted alongside Spencer's 
proclamation, and attracted greater attention from the Irish people than 
even the Castle document. It fell like a thunderbolt among the loyal, 
patriotic men of Dublin City. It read as follows : 

" To the People of Ireland : 

" On the eve of what seemed a bright future for our country that evil 
destiny which has apparently pursued us for centuries has struck at our 
hopes another blow, which cannot be exaggerated in its disastrous con- 
sequences. In this hour of sorrowful gloom we venture to give expres- 
sion to our profoundest sympathy with the people of Ireland in the 
calamity which has befallen our cause through this horrible deed, and 
with those who determined at the last hour that a policy of conciliation 
should supplant that of terrorism and national distrust. We earnestly 
hope that the attitude and action of the Irish people will show to the 

* Captain O'Shea's description of this Parnell proclamation in his evidence before the 
London commission displays the treason of the Provincial leaders. This proclamation 
was brought to Chamberlain's house by Parnell before it was issued, and no doubt shown 
to the enemy's Cabinet Minister. 



SCENES AND INCIDENTS AFTER THE TRAGEDY. 415 

world that an assassination such as has startled us almost to the aban- 
donment of hope of our country's future is deeply and religiously abhor- 
rent to their every feeling and instinct. We appeal to you to show by 
every manner of expression that amid the universal feeling of horror 
which the assassination has excited, no people feel so deeply a detesta- 
tion of its atrocity or so deep a sympathy with those whose hearts must 
be seared by it as the nation upon whose prosperity and reviving hopes it 
may entail consequences more ruinous than those that have fallen to the 
lot of unhappy Ireland during the present generation. . We feel that no 
act that has been ever perpetrated in our country during the exciting 
struggles of the last fifty years has so stained Ireland as this cowardly 
and unprovoked assassination of a friendly stranger, and that until the 
murderers of Cavendish and Burke are brought to justice that stain will 
sully our country's name. 

"Charles S. Parnell. 

" John Dillon. 

" Michael Davitt." 

Anything more infamous never was done by trusted men against their 
nation since Benedict Arnold went over to the British and tried to sur- 
render West Point to America's enemy. Neither O'Connell nor Mr. 
Butt ever at any time showed anything more than an invisible sword, but 
these men were associated with revolutionists. The party of action built up 
their movement, believing they were sincere and pure patriots. When 
Mr. Parnell told O'Donovan Rossa in Philadelphia that he purposed 
calling on him before he left that city Irishmen believed he was a stanch 
patriot, and although sincere in advocating quiet and peaceful measures, 
he did so because he believed that they had not been properly tested, and 
that he could succeed in shaming England into surrendering Ireland to 
its people. But he never condemned the men who thought differently ; 
on the contrary, he sought their aid and assistance. They had every 
reason to believe that Parnell would prove himself a worthy descendant 
of the gallant race he sprang from, and when he found that words were 
useless he would resort to blows. When Mr. Kennedy in Troy gave him 
a donation for bread for his starving countrymen and also handed him 
five times the amount for lead Mr. Parnell could not mistake the belief 
so openly expressed of many of his supporters. When Mr. Biggar told 
him and the crowd in Cork that Ireland might need another Hartman 
was there no significance in the words ? This proclamation is an indelible 
stain upon men whom Ireland loved and trusted ; they should have held 
their peace and let Britain do her worst. She is doing that to-day and 
did also under the sleek Gladstone and his despot underling Spencer. 

But when the hypocritical falsehood and cowardly nature of this 
proclamation are considered, it can be only characterized as the most 
infamous in history. 

The Irishmen in Dublin City when they turned from reading the 
Castle proclamation rubbed their eyes and looked again at its companion 
document ; they could scarce believe the evidence of their senses. They 
read it over carefully, noting every sentence. Some shook their heads in 
disapproval and silently walked away, not exchanging words with each other. 

The enemy's police and officials were pleased with the message of 
condolence to Britain and her seared hearts. The seared hearts of Mary 
Deane's family, of Ellen McDonagh's parents, of Patrick Melody's sorrow- 
ing mother, the invader's brutalities, his murders in Belmullet and Ballina, 
do not call for any notice from these recreant Irishmen. But the slaying 
of a new tyrant sent to carry on these infamies is called the " assassination 
of a friendly stranger." Spirits of our patriot dead ! it is enough to 



416 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

make you turn in your graves to hear men the beloved of Irish National- 
ists term an invading foe a friendly stranger. 

It was a study in Irish human nature to watch the features of the 
various readers — the knitted brow and gathering scowl of wrath, the pale 
face and startled, astonished look of some. These Irishmen showed by 
their manner not only approval and sympathy with the tragedy, but also 
that innate detestation in the Irish heart of men calling themselves patriotic 
who go out of their way to condemn any act done against the infamous 
tyranny of English rule. Groups of men gathered together were discus- 
sing Parnell's proclamation in suburban Dublin ; they seemed very out- 
spoken in their condemnation. One old Irishman said : " Musha, the 
devil's cure to them ! So they thank Gladstone for sending them to prison 
by doing the Government's dirty work. Och, but imprisonment takes the 
pluck out of the best of them." Some speakers indorsed the Irish Par- 
liamentary leaders' address and most heartily approved of every word. 
Others criticised and condemned it as uncalled for. " John Dillon," said 
one intelligent-looking speaker, " publicly stated in the House of Com- 
mons he would shoot any landlord who attempted to dispossess him of 
his farm, and believed before God he would be justified, and here in what 
I must call craven cowardice he condemns the killing of an arch-evictor, 
the delegate of that robbing Government which is trying to evict our 
whole nation, and which protects and aids the landlords." " Hush, Felix ! " 
said one of his comrades. " I tell you," replied the other, " I have no 
patience with these men and their English proclamation. It should be 
torn down and walked upon to show Irishmen's contempt for these rene- 
gades. They call this Englishman Cavendish a friendly stranger. He 
was an invader, who came here to carry out the usurping foreign Govern- 
ment's mission of murder and plunder. What other reason had he to leave 
his English home ? He was as much an invader and robber as the Dane, 
who was killed at Clontarf. If these foreign delegates were killed when 
they put foot upon our shore we would protest against their insolent 
assumption of coming here at all to in any manner assume the role of 
governing us. To do this would be to protest in a more manly way than 
by this perpetual talk, which I am hearing since my boyhood and which I 
am heartily disgusted with ! " "Well, Felix," said one of his hearers, " I 
must admit there is strong force in your reasoning." " I tell you," said 
the other, " I would not give the snap of my fingers for the death of Burke, 
England's paid instrument. But God strengthen the arm of the man who 
struck down Cavendish, England's Minister, who came to plunder and 
murder our people, for take British rule in its mildest form and it is 
nothing but highway robbery, and destruction to our hearths and homes." 
Walking away, he said in solemn tones to his sad-looking and thoughtful 
friends : " The proper action for Irishmen is to destroy all these blood- 
stained invaders. They are all, mild or tyrannical, serpent or wolf, invad- 
ing robbers, who would not visit our country but to assassinate and 
depopulate the nation." 

But the capital of the Irish nation was determined that it should not 
stultify the faith of generations of patriots by submitting in silence to 
these two infamous placards. The Executive of the I. R. B. issued a 
national proclamation in condemnation of the cowardly utterances of the 
Parliamentarians. 

" ' God save Ireland.' 

Dublin, May 8, 1882. 
" To the Irish People and all Lovers of Liberty, and particularly our Brothers 

of the I. R. B. and Kindred Organizations : 

" As there seems to be a grave misunderstanding as to the aim and 
scope of the late executions at Dublin, we the Executive of the I. R. B. 



SCENES AND INCIDENTS AFTER THE TRAGEDY. 4*7 

hereby request all the aforesaid to withhold their opinion of this matter for 
the present, and to refrain from the expression of sympathy at public 
meetings, which tend to humiliate Ireland and to give aid and comfort to 
England. 

"As to the monster Burke, he has preyed iipon the lives and liberties 
of his countrymen for many years, and has deserved death a thousand 
times at our hands ; and as to Lord Frederick Cavendish, the lineal 
descendant of the infamous Lord Broghill, who hanged the gallant and 
patriotic MacEagan, Bishop of Ross,at Carrigadrohid, because he would 
not betray his country — his very name stinks in the nostrils of the Irish 
people by the iniquities of his brother, Lord Hartington, and the whole- 
sale evictions of his father, the Duke of Devonshire, thereby driving 
thousands of the rightful owners of the soil to the poorhouse, exile, and 
death. 

" This organization has tolerated the vagaries of Mr. Parnell and his 
late treason-mongers until they have filled the bastiles in our country with 
the victims of a useless Parliamentary agitation, which left 20,000 persons 
homeless last year, and drove millions of the flower of our people to exile. 
This ceases to be harmless when a truce is made by which he himself and 
his friends are allowed to go free, and eighty (80) of Ireland's bravest 
sons are left to languish in prison, to be exiled or assassinated, and these 
the men who by the so-called ' outrages ' opened the prison doors to Mr. 
Parnell and his friends. 

" If England really wished to deal fairly by Ireland why did she not 
issue a general amnesty, by which the prison doors would be opened and 
thousands of our exiled brethren who now pine in foreign lands could 
return in safety and honor ? Instead of this Mr. Gladstone sent emis- 
saries to the venerated head of the Catholic Church, who by lies and 
false representations have deprived thousands of our poor, persecuted 
people of the comforts of religion by turning our altars into political 
platforms. Let us ask the people of Ireland, Are there no classes of the 
people to be considered except the farmers, and of what avail will it be to 
Ireland if a selfish class is firmly rooted in the soil and becomes thor- 
oughly loyal to England ? 

" We ask our friends in America to ponder on our desperate circum- 
stances, to think of a brave and honorable people driven to despair by 
witnessing the white bosoms of our women torn open by the bayonets of 
English mercenaries and our children of tender age shot down in the 
highways, while our wails of anguish are stifled in our blood. 

" We are convinced that no true prosperity can exist in Ireland so long 
as England possesses her customhouses, these allowing her manufactures 
to pass into Ireland duty free, thereby leaving our Irish mechanics 
unemployed. The destruction of Irish manufactures, added to the 
enormous war tribute exacted by England, which takes away the produce 
of the land, thereby forcing the Irish people to starve. 

" Now, furthermore, we call upon all our brothers in America, particu- 
larly t the advanced Nationalists, to aid, by every means within their power, 
the men who have carried out this execution, and we hereby further 
declare that they deserve well of their country. 

" By order of the 

" Executive of the I. R. B." * 

As the week slowly passed and no news with any truthful appearance 
presented itself men wondered more and more. Mingle with Irish 

* This proclamation we have since learned was not issued by the official executive of 
the I. R. B., but by some of the officers who were in sympathy with the Invincible action 
in Dublin. 



418 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Nationalists and a quiet smile of joy could be seen to now and then flit 
over their features when Saturday's memorable event was discussed. 
After the first burst of indignation had swept away like a hurricane at the 
Parnellite proclamation men began to smile and look knowingly to each 
other, and shake their heads and give a quiet laugh when the denuncia- 
tion of the Parliamentary triumvirate was mentioned. 

It would be useless to tell these men that this proclamation of the 
Parnellites was published in all seriousness and with no diplomatic re- 
serve whatever. Already the lessons of deception had entered into the 
Irish masses, leaving them completely at the mercy of ambitious politi- 
cians, whom they mistook for patriots. They felt (or a large number of 
them did) that the stronger the denunciation the more heartily was this 
deed indorsed by the leaders of the public movement. These men's 
personal associations and past speeches could have for these people no 
other meaning. 

These and many other speculations and surmises troubled the public 
mind of Ireland. False and misleading was the information then and 
since which was permitted to percolate through the National ranks. 
This historic and immortal event has suffered at the hands of weak 
friends and unrelenting foes ; it has been covered over by the vile excre- 
ment of renegades as well as enemies, the former by infamous slander, 
equivocation, and subterfuge, centred round their one ideal — self. It 
has been befogged by the vanities of weak and inane minds, who 
sought to be known as the comrades — when they were merely the 
companions and associates — of Titans ; they who were among them, 
but not of them. It has suffered and been assailed by the malignancy of 
the foe, but much more grievously by the slander of traitors and the folly 
of weaklings, the latter, froglike, seeking self-glorification, while the 
traitor was digging a grave for his own self-degradation. They have 
slandered with foul abuse their nation and the cause for which heroes 
have suffered. Great historic event ! brave men will salute thee. You 
will remain a landmark for all time to tell the tyrant that Ireland was 
not disarmed, that his edicts were powerless, to speak to him in words of 
fire that the brave nation had manhood to strike and courage to dare — 
courage that can only be supplied by the supernatural conviction of the 
God-given justice of her cause, for the patriot needs a higher order of 
daring than even the soldier of the forlorn hope surrounded by his com- 
rades in all the pomp and panoply of glorious war. Let slaves and cow- 
ards whine as they may, they cannot obliterate the glorious 6th of May 
from the pages of Irish history. 

The Irish leaders of the public movement evidently issued their proc- 
lamation when suffering under nervous shock ; fright alone can explain 
this terrible infamy. Not content with madly rushing to the enemy's 
rescue at a momentous crisis when the Briton's rule in Ireland was 
quivering under the effect of the mysterious lightning stroke so fiercely 
dealt at his presence in the country, they permitted their official journal, 
United Ireland, reinstated in Dublin by the enemy's permission, to aid the 
invader by its vain attempts to cast the stain of crime upon the unknown 
patriots. They allowed, or possibly instructed, the editor of that journal, 
Mr. O'Brien, a man with the volatility of a windmill and the fanaticism of 
an illusionist in his faith in the use of words to free nations, to publish an 
editorial upon this historic incident worthy of Britain's murder organ the 
London Times, attacking his own countrymen who tried to hold the 
breach when the foe had imprisoned the orators. This paper may 
possibly be found in a few years in alliance with the man it calls " Bloody 
Balfour " to-day, as it is now singing the praises of the "red earl," Spencer, 
whom it charged — and truthfully — of having blood-stained hands, red 



SCENES AND INCIDENTS AFTER THE TRAGEDY. 419 

with the life current of his murdered victims. The Orange rebel organs 
the Daily Express antl Mail, or even the London Times, could not approach 
it in the use of ferocious abuse and misleading statements, leveled at the 
Irish party of action, including an extraordinary and misleading cartoon. 

A somewhat similar cartoon appeared one year later in England's 
comic journal Punch. It was shortly after Carey's information became 
public. This cartoon in Punch was in Teniel's best style. It represented 
Britannia and Erin, two female figures clad in classic drapery. Erin was 
of course in grief, and was shown leaning for comfort and consolation on 
her beloved sister Britannia, whose protecting arm was thrown about her 
companion's form. Britannia looked fiercely and wrathfully before her. 
She was holding by a string a bulldog, who was sniffing the ground, and 
underneath were the words : " On the scent." Events proved that the 
bulldog got on a false trail. If he had been a keen brute what a dainty 
dish there would have been to serve before the Queen. Or perhaps, as it 
now appears more probable, it did not suit the vile purpose of the bull- 
dog's master to develop matters too much. He was content with his 
knowledge, and was determined to use it for his own purpose, the com- 
plete subjugation of the Irish nation, aided knowingly or unknowingly 
by the men it loved and trusted. 

Vain folly of tyrants. Nations cannot be so easily destroyed. As 
a great writer expresses it : " The protest of the right against the fact 
persists forever. The robbery of a people never becomes prescriptive. 
These lofty swindles have no future. You cannot pick the mark out of 
a nation as you can out of a handkerchief." 

The arrests made haphazard by the police at this time told everyone 
the British officials had altogether lost their heads. English visitors in 
Dublin were much frightened, and all sorts of absurd stories were put in 
circulation. On the night of the " suppression " a London merchant 
came into his hotel in College Green at a late hour. He was in a com- 
plete state of nervous prostration. His deathlike face, protruding eye- 
balls, and chattering teeth denoted a condition of abject fear. He was 
a poor representative of the fire-eating John Bull. He had scarcely 
strength to ring up the waiter, and when the attendant came he tried to 
articulate brandy. After applying himself to the stimulant he sum- 
moned courage to tell the few gentlemen in the room what caused his 
fright. 

When the rumor circulating in the hotel reached him he went up 
to the Castle to make inquiries, and the exaggerated stories he heard 
frightened him. He turned out of his way down the quays, and was 
roaming there the victim of an excited imagination. He was too nervous 
to ask any stranger to direct him. At last he met a sergeant of police, 
who told him he was walking away from his hotel. The sergeant, pro- 
ducing a lantern (an unusual article with Dublin policemen), drew the 
slide and threw the light into several doorways as they passed, looking 
for mysterious lurkers. The sergeant was much frightened and told, 
the English gentleman, whose name and address he placed in his note- 
book, that the authorities feared trouble that night, and that the 
Government thought it very probable there would be a " rising in the 
city." They were not at all satisfied at the deep silence with which the 
news of the park tragedy was received. When he had escorted the 
Englishman to the corner of Parliament and Dame streets he left him,, 
pointing out the route back to the hotel. He particularly cautioned him 
against walking on the footway, and told him to keep by the tramway 
lines in the centre of the street and he would then be safe. What this 
Englishman had to fear during so short a walk in the usually peaceful city 
of Dublin he knew not. The danger was in his own imagination. The 



420 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

wretched demoralization which takes possession o| British employees, 
police, and detectives when they think that the Irish are preparing to 
strike back shows that the old maxim, " He is thrice armed whose cause 
is just," acts upon the nerves of Ireland's persecutors. 

The English merchant, whose fear the police sergeant helped to 
intensify on that famous Saturday night, left Dublin a few days after, 
making a business visit to Newcastle-on-Tyne en route to London. 
He and two friends were arrested in Newcastle ; the police having 
learned that they had come from Dublin, these sagacious officials con- 
cluded they must have been participants in the recent tragedy. After the 
inconvenience of temporary arrest they were of course released. This 
and numbers of other cases of a similar nature occurring in both countries 
are illustrative of the sound sense and good judgment of British guardians 
of the peace, and especially the secret service police of that kingdom, 
when political prisoners are sought after. The intelligence of these men 
is always at fault in revolutionary cases unless they are supplied with 
information. Of course if they once get a clew they will follow it up to all 
possible success. The blundering stupidity and gross vanity of some men, 
who ought to have known better, have occasionally set them on a trail, 
which made the rest easy ; but any quiet man, with resolution and no 
bluster, can easily beat them in any, even the most dangerous, under- 
taking. Nationalists have sometimes asked, reading of the many arrests 
made at this time, did any of the real parties think of the lines of Livy, 
"By flying men often meet their fate." 

The following week Dublin began to settle down into a more calm 
feeling; the newspapers were announcing important arrests in every edition, 
and of course the detective department had it impressed upon the news- 
paper reporters that it was in possession of grave and important 
information, that it held a clew, which, in the interests of justice, it could 
not allow to be published. 

The action of the Dublin patriots rang with a clarion sound over 
Europe. It was discussed in cabinets and courts, and in every gathering 
of diplomats. Ireland was forcing herself into the European question. 
Greece, who struggled and now lives, by manly deeds emerged from the 
darkness into light. Bulgaria, overrun by the Ottoman banditti, struggled 
to strike back, and the great Slav nation Russia came to her rescue. 
Italy, overrun by the Austrian, met her invader with the dagger of the 
revolutionist, and afterward by the valor of the soldier. Hungary, 
crushed and defeated, saw hope in the campaign of 1866. Kossuth in 
Florence and Klapka in Berlin at the approach of war against their 
Austrian oppressor entered into an alliance with the allied enemies of 
Austria, offering help against the common enemy for the restoration of 
Hungarian independence. Insurgents were mustering over the Magyars' 
land, and when Klapka's address to his insurgent countrymen awoke the 
national life : " Brave warriors ! At my country's call I assume the com- 
mand of the Hungarian armies and address you in the capacity of com- 
mander-in-chief. Our country is no longer left unbefriended. The 
powerful kings of Prussia and Italy hold out their right hands to us. 
Garibaldi will assist us from Italy. Turr will operate against the 
Danube, Bethlen take the field in Transylvania, while I will lead you 
forward from Prussia. Ludwig Kossuth will be in our midst. Thus 
united we will expel the Austrian, that has so long shed our best blood 
and robbed us of our wealth. The country of Arpad is our own, and 
we will secure it to ourselves. In 1848 and 1849 we gained immortal 
glory without obtaining our wishes ; this time we shall gather fresh 
laurels and succeed. Forward, then ! gather round the Hungarian 
standard and remember that wherever it is unfurled it is the duty of 



SCENES AND INCIDENTS AFTER THE TRAGEDY. 421 

the Hungarians to rally round it. But a few days' march from here 
are the frontiers of our beloved country. There I will guide you, there 
where parents, sisters, and brides await us with open arms. You have to 
choose between remaining prisoners of war and sharing the honor of 
fighting for the liberty of our country." But the fates had willed it that 
Austria should crumble beneath the blows of her German rival Prussia. 
When at three o'clock that famous afternoon of July 3, 1866, the crown 
prince's army pierced the Austrian right and entered the village of Kulm 
Hungary had won self-government. The ping of the Prussian needle gun, 
the eloquence of the cannon, and the tread of martial men had created a 
nation. The Austrian surrendered. To meet a fresh enemy in Hungary in 
her crippled state she knew she was powerless to attempt. The request 
of Hungary, which was refused at the opening of the campaign against 
Italy and Prussia, was now eagerly offered by the Austrian emperor. 
Hungary became a self-governed kingdom. The only link remaining 
to-day between the separate parts of the empire is the personal tie 
of the same sovereign. Greece! Italy! Bulgaria! Hungary! Irishmen 
hail you, noble nations, and glory in your freedom ! Ireland too must 
show the nations she is likewise worthy of a deliverer, but to make herself 
heard mid the clash of warring nationalities she must strike. The bared 
steel of the Phoenix Park gleamed in the face of Europe, and the nations 
and the peoples knew that Ireland was in earnest, and that she would 
never cease to toil and to face death until the sunburst gleaming on her 
green banner flying proudly over Irish soil witnessed the consummation 
of her hopes and the fulfillment of her destiny. 

The peoples of Europe, who were confounded at the peculiar and con- 
tradictory tactics of the agitators, seeing an economic question put forth 
as if it were a national demand, became alive to the importance of the 
position ; and when the winter's horrors, like the Bulgarian atrocities, only 
disguised in more hellish cunning, had passed over Ireland and that 
unhappy land seemed prostrate 'neath the British marauders, suddenly, 
as if a perpetual and darkened eclipse had burst into sunlight, there 
shone forth upon the path of liberty the upheaving of the indignant nation, 
and in the broad light of day Britain, personified in the new Minister of her 
banditti rule, fell prostrate beneath the arm of outraged Ireland on the 
grassy sward of the Phoenix Park. Irishmen, read what the European press 
has to say of your country. The Citizen, writing of this great event, says : 

" This is evidently a war of extermination — that is, of Ireland's 
extremists against monarchical England. A country where in broad 
daylight four resolute men stab officials of high position does vastly 
more for the designs of revolution than does Russia, where the Nihilists 
hide underground, dig mines, and resort to timid means instead of 
striking straight and openly at the heart. 

" We hope the English Government will resume a policy of repression. 
The dagger having once commenced its work, the struggle will go on 
mercilessly and end in the triumph of Ireland, aided by the co-operation 
of revolutionists." 

Through the cowardism of those to whom Ireland intrusted her 
destiny, and who are trying to sell her over to her ex-tyrant William 
E. Gladstone she has ceased to strike ; but, nevertheless, the war, as 
spoken of by this European writer who so nobly sympathized with her 
sufferings, has not ceased. It goes on without mercy. Ireland sitting 
helplessly bewails her fate, as she is taught to keep on wailing, while the 
foe unmercifully strikes her hourly. 

The Russian organ the Golos of St. Petersburg writes thus upon the 
Irish situation : 



422 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

"We think that the tragical death of Lord Frederick Cavendish and 
Mr. Burke proves that Mr. Gladstone was profoundly mistaken in sup- 
posing that Mr. Parnell and his friends were the real leaders of the Irish 
movement, and that peace could be obtained by mere agrarian reform. 
The movement is political, and not entirely agrarian, and there is a secret 
party behind the Land League which aims at nothing short of over- 
throwing English authority." 

This journal, the organ of Britain's rival in the struggle for Eastern 
empire, could not understand that an agrarian reform could be called a 
national issue, as if reform, either agrarian or of any kind, were possible 
under foreign tyranny. The affair in the park at Dublin showed Russian 
journalists and statesmen that Ireland had determined and brave men 
ready to make sacrifices for her freedom, and that she would be a useful 
ally in any coming complications. 

The Rappel of Paris, the organ of the great French poet, the illustrious 
and immortal Victor Hugo, and also numbering among its contributors 
Louis Blanc and M. Vacquerie, all then living, makes these remarks upon 
the 6th of May : 

"Such an event happening just when Mr. Gladstone had liberated 
the Land League leaders shows how implacable is Ireland's hatred for 
England. It is not so much a political and social insurrection as a war 
of independence that seems foreshadowed." 

The Irishmen who were the actors in this immortal drama held the 
independence of their country absolute and free from all British control 
and influence as Ireland's only hope and redemption, and those who live 
hold fast this precious and undying faith in their country's regeneration 
by manly deeds. 

M. Henri Rochefort, whom Mr. Parnell had visited to gain the aid of 
his powerful voice for Ireland, writing in the Intransigeant, said : 

" The cannon is the ultima ratio of kings and the dagger is the ultima 
ratio of subjects. 

" Ireland immediately saw she was trifled with and she replied to this 
irony with the dagger. This style of reply, perhaps useless in Russia, 
where the officials, however ferocious, are generally brave, has already pro- 
duced considerable results in England, where the cowardice of the shop- 
keepers who govern her is inveterate." 

M. Rochefort concluded a very ably written article by citing the case 
of the Austrian Gessler and William Tell as a proof that tyrannicide 
answers, and by regretting that Orsini did not kill Napoleon III., which 
would have saved France from the calamities of 1870. 

The daring of the deed in the Phoenix Park seemed to strike the 
European writers, both those in sympathy with Irish aspirations for inde- 
pendence and reactionary organs. The Austrian newspapers were 
astonished at this unprecedented Irish action. The Vienna Presse thus 
alludes to the subject : 

" We wonder how the men could escape from such a frequented place 
as the Phoenix Park. We do not doubt it is a political murder, but who 
can have been the perpetrators?" 

The Mot aVOrdre in its comments on the Phoenix Park tragedy says : 

" We hope that the Irish will show they are worthy of liberty by not 
allowing themselves to be lured by a few paltry concessions. We exhort 
them to continue the struggle without truce or mercy to reconquer their 
independence. We have not to trouble ourselves with the means by which 
this transformation will be effected. The change of policy of the English 
Ministers leads us to hope that violence will not be essential to the triumph 
of justice, but even if some excesses are to be feared and deemed neces- 



SCENES AND INCIDENTS AFTER THE TRAGEDY. 423 

sary, we should not indulge in hypocritical lamentations on the fate of 
privileged victims of this defense of property based on confiscation and 
fraud." 

Brave Frenchmen, the men who would try to reconquer Ireland's 
independence see their unhappy country in the grasp of politicians who 
have given to the nation a narcotic ; but soon, very soon, they expect 
that the effects of the drug will have passed away, and that awakened 
Ireland will stretch out her limbs and shake off Gladstonism and this 
Provincial agitation, which is a mockery and sham, and once more 
embrace the doctrine of Tone and Emmet and her glorious patriots. 

The National Zeitung of Berlin, a journal which has from time to time 
published many a political communique" from Europe's great statesman the 
Iron Chancellor, Prince Bismarck, writes thus upon the Phoenix Park 
incident : 

" There is no doubt here we have a political murder. . . It is pos- 
sible that the deed of horror expresses the disappointment of the Irish 
conspirators at the nomination of Lord Frederick Cavendish. But it is 
equally credible that it is traceable to the men who will hear nothing of 
the compromises effected between Gladstone and Parnell, who are averse 
to any diminution of the hostility existing between Ireland and England, 
and who desire to carry on the movement till their country is sundered 
from Great Britain." 

The Bataille, a French journal, writing on the subject says : 

" By executing Cavendish and Burke the unhappy slaves of English 
land law publicly declare that pseudo-liberal measures cannot satisfy 
them ; that the time is past for political jugglery, for that trifling which 
always conceals some snare ; that they have a goal in view, with a firm 
resolution of reaching it — namely, Irish independence." 

How clearly these foreign journals understood the real meaning of 
the 6th of May in Dublin ; and yet numbers of Irishmen all over the 
United States permitted themselves to believe that the release of Mr. 
Parnell and the resignation of Mr. Forster were an Irish victory. When 
Irishmen study more carefully the intrigue and duplicity of English 
Ministers toward Ireland they will be slow to believe in victory until it is 
actually obtained. When the Irish flag, the standard of an independent 
nation, flutters in the breeze over the ruins of Dublin Castle, then, and 
only then, will victory be assured. To accomplish this let Irishmen 
take a lesson from their enemy Mr. Gladstone, and let their words take 
the shape of acts. 

The Marseillaise thus comments upon the Irish situation : 

" Thus it is no longer at simple landed proprietors that the musket 
balls of Ireland are aimed. They strike down the Queen's delegates 
in broad daylight. We pity the victims, but the immense pity we feel for 
the horrible situation of the Irish people forbids us to show too much 
sympathy. Ireland since the first day of the conquest has been in a state 
of legitimate self-defense. If at the cost of a series of outrages she suc- 
ceeds in casting off the terrible yoke which the sister island imposes 
on her what friend of humanity would think of blaming her for it ?" 

Irishmen will do well if they reflect upon the situation of their 
country and look on the position of their nation as seen by European 
eyes. Strange to say, the Irish National journals in free America had, 
not anything like the intelligent criticism these European journals 
published of the 6th of May in Dublin. 

The Citizen criticised the manifesto of the Land League leaders. 
The English journals were exceedingly displeased with the tone of the 
comments printed in this paper. In its columns it substituted " execu- 
tion " or "suppression" for what they termed murder. It said : 



424 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

" This manifesto explains itself. There are two organizations in 
Ireland, one public, the other secret. The former pretends to keep 
within the limits of legality, and for form 's sake is obliged to protest against 
the terrorist measures. The above manifesto has at bottom no real sig- 
nificance." 

The Citoyen of Paris said : 

"The Gladstone Cabinet resolved to change its tactics, force proving 
powerless to checkmate force. The Ministry were determined to try 
trickery. Then they liberated the suspects, received the Irish members 
with mellifluous compliments, and lastly sent to Ireland a man of recon- 
ciliation — Lord Frederick Cavendish. This statesman and his lieutenant 
one hour after having taken command of the island have been summarily 
executed by the agents of the Land League. . . If the Government removed 
coercion it was not out of humanity, but from impotence. It is right 
that the Irish should take advantage of the situation. . . The triumph 
of independent Ireland is certain. Thanks to a secret organization 
composed of tried men and considerable capital furnished by inter- 
national combinations, the Land League will one day or other win, . . 

" The means must be adapted to the circumstances. Since in Ireland 
and Russia there is no liberty, Irishmen are forced to employ what 
weapons are left to them." 

The Dublin Irishman, the property of the Parnellites, spoke very 
differently from their official organ, United Ireland, and gave more strength 
to the belief of the Dublin men that the Parnell and Dillon proclamation 
was a ruse to deceive the enemy. No Irish journal in this great free 
continent spoke with a more patriotic ring than did this newspaper pub- 
lished 'neath the shadow of Dublin Castle. The Dublin Irishman said : 

" Without excusing crime of any character or for any purpose, we hold 
that aggression is always followed by retaliation, and that repression is 
invariably the cause of outrage. It is not in Ireland alone that hostility 
on one side begets enmity on the other. Human nature is the same 
everywhere. No nation suffers injury without making an effort in its 
own defense. The English people ought to remember that we did not 
begin the bloody strife which has lasted for seven hundred years. Let 
them remember it was they who first declared war upon the people of 
this country. With armed bands they invaded the island, slaughtered the 
inhabitants, seized their lands, and took possession of their worldly goods. 
Year after year for centuries the English forces perpetrated many out- 
rages in the catalogue of crime. As the Irish race could not submit to 
murder, robbery, and conquest, it fought and struggled against the 
stream of invasion which continued until recent days. Thus the war has 
been brought down to our own time, not of our own will, but because the 
rapacity of the invaders was never satisfied." 

These- opinions of the European press and the article of the Irish 
journal speak eloquently in support of the patriots' action in the Phoenix 
Park. The Parnellite proclamation calls the tragedy cowardly. We 
question if ever any of the three men whose names were affixed to that 
lamentable document will ever dare near as much for Ireland. Three or 
six months' imprisonment for howling at the British is the pinnacle of 
their martyrdom. The London Times, Ireland's bitter enemy, was com- 
.pelled to admit that this slaying of the Secretaries was a daring action. 
This admission was wrung from it. Ought not Irishmen to hide their 
heads with shame who attempt to belittle the heroic acts of their more 
self-sacrificing countrymen ? 

The Times, speaking of the tragedy in its issue one week after the 
event, in a howl of rage said : 

"The crime itself was not only brutal, but it was defiant and insolent 



SCENES AND INCIDENTS AFTER THE TRAGEDY. 425 

No one who has not actually examined the surroundings of the scene can 
be adequately impressed with this fact. All Dublin and many others 
examined the locality, and they see plainly what it all means — that the 
secret societies have challenged the whole power of the Executive, the 
Lord Lieutenant, the Constabulary, and the military in the very heart 
and centre of their stronghold, and that they have inflicted a blow which 
will be all-powerful for evil in the immediate future if the authorities are 
baffled." 

That was so. The Invincibles sought their foe in the heart and 
centre of his stronghold. They went there prepared to give Irishmen 
and the enemy a lesson that will long be remembered. And as long as 
daring deeds and heroic actions to redeem suffering nations are cherished 
by mankind, so long will these patriotic Irishmen receive a niche in the 
temple of fame. There, surrounded by his military, his Constabulary, 
and within sight of the Lord Deputy, in broad daylight they "sup- 
pressed" British rule in the person of the chief invader. Not in this 
generation, perhaps, will the sacrifice be appreciated by their countrymen, 
for whom some died and others suffered, but when the green island 
assumes her rightful place among the European nations and the banner of 
independent Ireland shall be flung to the breeze, free men will remember 
that amid the hideous night of oppression that William E. Gladstone 
gave to Ireland there flashed like a star a guiding light of liberty, a steel 
blade 'mid the black, inky gloom of tyranny, and Irishmen will place the 
6th of May in their calendar of great and memorable anniversaries. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

(1882-83.) 

THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY — SPENCER'S BATTUES OF HANGINGS — "THE 
BLOODY ASSIZE" — "ACCUSING SPIRITS." 

The Irish Crimes Bill — Star Chamber Clauses — Became Law July 12, 1882 — Arrests Under 
the Suspect Act — James Carey Arrested as a Suspect — Scene in Grafton Street — 
Seizure of a Rifle and Knives — Carey's Horror at the Name Informer — Unveiling 
the O'Connell Monument — Description of the Festive Scene — Lord Mayor Dawson's 
Oration — John Mitchel on O'Connell — Imperial Legislators — Lord Mayor and High 
Sheriff — The Murder Assize — Judge Lawson — Letter from William O'Brien — Francis 
Hynes' Drunken Jury — Midnight Orgies in the Imperial Hotel — Dublin Freeman 
on Packed Juries — Irish Protestants — "We've Hands and Hearts for you" — 
" I'm in Blood " — Callanan, the Perjurer — Judge Lawson and Mr. Gray — Mr. O'Brien 
Expelled the Court — Judge Lawson Sentences the High Sheriff — Three Months in 
Prison, .£500 Fine — Sent to Richmond Bridewell — Mr. Barrett, Catholic Foreman of 
Hynes' Jury — Results of the Bloody Assize — Francis Hynes, Death — Patrick Walsh, 
Death — Michael Walsh, Death— Penal Servitude for the Others — Perjurers Suffer 
Remorse— Innocent Men Hanged — Dock in the Court House a Shambles — Mr. 
O'Brien's Leader in United Ireland — "Accusing Spirits " — Dying Men Protest their 
Innocence — In the Dock — On the Scaffold — Francis Hynes : "I am Innocent" — 
Patrick Walsh: " The Day Will Come to Account for my Innocent Life" — Michael 
Walsh : " Before God and the Virgin I Never Lifted Hand or Foot " — Patrick Hig- 
gins : "lam Going before my God ; I am as Innocent as the Child in the Cradle " 
— Myles Joyce : "On my Dying Oath I Never Fired a Shot in my Life" — Thomas 
Higgins : " I Solemnly Swear I am Innocent ; this is a Slaughtering House " — 
Michael Flynn : "I am Innocent; I am Glad to go to my God " — Glutted with 
Blood — " Kicked into Eternity by Marwood " — O'Brien's Arrest — Sent for Trial — 
Before the Assize. 

As soon as the excitement into which British Ministerial circles were 
thrown by the 6th of May tragedy had subsided, and the Land League 
leaders had resumed their normal condition after the terrible fright 
which permeated their ranks, caused by the incident in Dublin, the 
machinery of British Parliamentary rule began its accustomed work. As 
the machine ran in the usual groove, it met at this time with no unusual 
friction. The now weak and puny resistance of the Irish changelings 
was not perceptible. What a contrast to the bold, determined, and out- 
spoken opposition of one year ago, that is, so far as Parliamentary oppo- 
sition in an alien assembly can be so characterized. Mr. Gladstone, pale, 
weary, and irritable, was suffering under a twofold trouble : the death 
of his friend and colleague, Lord Frederick Cavendish, who was a relative 
of his wife, and the wound inflicted on his vanity by the upsetting of his 
deep-laid scheme for the pacification of Ireland. Yet the lesson which the 
Irish Secretary's death taught him stung him to the soul ; he scarce gave 
a moment's reflection to the many lives which were sacrificed by the 
policy he enforced in Ireland and in the Transvaal ; many who lost their 
lives in that bloody struggle were his own countrymen. He had thrown 
off the mask of amiability, with full determination to strain every engine 
of persecution to the utmost to make stubborn Ireland subservient to 
his will. His new Crimes Bill, which he originally intended to intro- 
duce under the plea of having to combat with Irish secret societies, as 
admitted by Mr. Chamberlain, one of his Cabinet, at a subsequent date, 
was made more stringent by the addition of a new clause, a renewal of 
the Star Chamber inquisition of a few centuries back. This clause was 

426 



THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY. 427 

restored to a British Act of Parliament by the enlightened and liberty- 
loving Premier who had denounced before the world the despotism of 
Neapolitan prison life, and wrote so appealingly to the humane peoples 
of the world of the imprisonment of Silvio Pellico. He was now again 
forging fresh fetters for unhappy Ireland. This inquisition clause com- 
pelled men who were arrested and charged with no offense to testify to 
their own opinions and actions and those of their friends before Mr. 
Gladstone's "Grand Inquisitor," John Curran, in Dublin Castle. 

It was unfortunate for Mr. Gladstone, as it has been both before and 
since that period for other English Premiers, that he could not, when a 
crisis came upon him, punish Ireland in proportion to his desires ; as that 
island has as much coercion as British ingenuity can invent, it is found 
impossible to conceive any new or fresh torments. 

There is but one great and serious loss which Ireland can be com- 
pelled to endure in addition to her normal woes, and this great loss she 
is told is irremediable. It is this grief, which she was then about to suffer 
under : the absence of all encouraging, friendly, and hopeful speeches 
from England's great Liberal Premier. To hear angry words from that 
good man, whose heart was wrung with grief and agony, and to know 
that he felt compelled to utter them — this was indeed additional punish- 
ment, and of more import to Ireland than all Britain's chains and tor- 
ments. To learn that she no longer lived under the sunshine of the 
benevolent smile of that noble and whole-souled Englishman — it was the 
last cup of her many sorrows, and was, or ought to be, according to the 
legal agitators, sufficient to drive unhappy Ireland into the depths of 
despair. 

Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish Crimes Bill into the British Com- 
mons, and after passing that chamber it went in due course to the House 
of Lords, and on the famous anniversary of a battle in Ireland between 
two foreign kings, on July 12, 1882, the British sovereign's consent was 
given to the measure and it became law. 

On Wednesday, July 5, 1882, there were, arrested in Dublin City some 
four or five men under the " suspect " provisions of the expiring " Protec- 
tion to Life and Property Act," which was soon to be succeeded by its 
sanguinary relative entitled the " Prevention of Crimes Act." Among 
these prisoners of the English enemy were Daniel Curley, Edward 
McCaffery, and Peter Doyle, names which became familiar a little later. 
The cause of their arrest was suspicion of being identified with the kill- 
ing of John Kenney, who was executed for treason, giving information to 
the British enemy which had resulted in the seizure of some arms 
belonging to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The British suspected 
these men of being energetic in the I. R. B. ranks, and without a tittle of 
evidence to connect them with the execution of Kenney the enemy arrested 
them on vague suspicion. 

James Carey, since much spoken of, was imprisoned for the same cause. 
Previous to his arrest under the Suspect Act, and a day or two after 
Kenney was shot, Carey in talking to an Irish Nationalist of this occur- 
rence said in reply to some remarks made to him : " It would be a terri- 
ble thing to be shot as a traitor and to be really innocent ; it is not so 
much the loss of life as the stain and degradation on your memory, and 
then think of the infamous name which would be attached to your 
children and their posterity. It is too horrible to think of." Carey was 
really sincere in these expressions ; he had the Irishman's horror and dread 
of the name of informer. He would have shuddered with disgust and 
repulsiveness himself if he could have been shown at that time the picture 
of his future degradation. There was not money enough in the British 
Treasury to have purchased Carey's betrayal of any secret of importance, 



428 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and yet he carried within him that speck of rotten cowardice which, 
plaguelike, spread itself over the whole frame, destroying the goodly pro- 
portions that were there before. 

A few days after Carey's imprisonment one of his tenants, named John 
Fitzsimons, who noticed him making secret visits to a loft in the tene- 
ment house where this man lived, hearing of his arrest, was curious to pay 
a visit to the loft and see what was secreted there. He did so and found 
two surgical knives and a very expensive and valuable rifle. Tempted 
by the large reward, and suspecting they were in some way connected 
with revolutionary business, of which he probably knew nothing and was 
one of the utterly indifferent, he visited the police and made his bargain 
for their surrender. The Government considered it got a prize, but 
this prize was not very long in its possession until its capture was known 
to the Irish Nationalists ; it filtered through the supposed secret portals of 
Scotland Yard. The account of this seizure was not published until 
some time after Carey's release, which occurred, owing to the expiration 
of the " Suspect" Act, late in September. 

The great event of the year, the completion of the O'Connell monu- 
ment, came round, which filled with joy those patriotic and noble souls 
who believe in freeing nations by the force of words. On August 3 
the bronze statue of the great talker arrived in Dublin and was taken to 
the pedestal at the foot of O'Connell Street (late Sackville) ; it was safely 
deposited, and over it was raised the national flag, Ireland's green 
banner. The gentlemen who did this no doubt thought they were 
honoring the memory of O'Connell, but it seems a satire. Mr. O'Connell 
was a faithful subject of the Queen of Britain ; he never wavered in any 
manner from his allegiance to that royal throne from the days of his 
early manhood when as a volunteer he wore the British livery against 
the men of '98, whom he must have considered rebels, down to the year 
of the Queen's accession when at a banquet in England in that year of 
grace 1837 he proffered the English people 100,000 loyal Irishmen to 
keep their young Queen on the throne if necessary. 

There had been some rumors at that time of a conspiracy to depose 
the young Queen and place one of her royal uncles on the throne instead. 
In this conspiracy the Orangemen were supposed to be implicated, which 
story the pious and loyal O'Connell, a faithful upholder of British legiti- 
matists and of their banner the union jack, most devoutly believed in. 

On the morning of the 15th day of August, 1882, Dublin put on her 
holiday attire to honor the memory of her matchless orator, Daniel 
O'Connell. An English writer, a close observer of Irish processions, thus 
describes the scene : 

" The demonstration, viewed as a whole, was picturesque and imposing. 
The effect of the procession was, however, marred by the want of order 
and compactness in the leading files. They were directed to walk six 
deep, but they did not observe any fixed arrangement, the files being 
quite irregular and ranging from three to nine deep. They also got 
mixed up in the crowd, and when the procession halted, as it frequently 
had to do, its members were quite undistinguishable from the dense 
throng in which they stood. They all wore green embroidered scarves 
across their shoulders, green ribbons in their hats or tufts of palm and 
and other leaves ; but as the crowd of spectators wore the same badges 
there were no marks by which the men who marched would be recognized, 
as numbers of people not belonging to their ranks, especially females, 
walked along with them. 

" Each trade and other organized body was preceded by a carriage, in 
which the standard was borne, and immediately behind these were the 
bands, which were dressed in showy, and in some instances fantastic, uni- 



THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY. 429 

forms of green and gold. Small bannerets of different colors were carried 
by the files, and men on horseback with white wands were supposed to 
act as marshals, but in the presence of the immense crowds through 
which they had to make their way the authority of the marshals was of 
little avail. Many of the banners were of an elaborate and costly 
character having various pictorial representations upon them, in which 
Erin with her harp and other attendant emblems was the most prominent 
figure. Some of the scientific decorations were artistically done, and 
they were mounted in heavy gilt frames or hung on burnished poles. 
They had expressive inscriptions upon them, such as ' Divided we fall, 
united we stand,' 'Ireland a nation,' 'Success to Irish industry,' and 
numerous national mottoes. 

" The irregular movements of the processionists suggested a belief 
that the Fenian element was little if at all represented in the demonstra- 
tion. The spectator who had seen the anniversary processions and the 
McManus funeral could not fail to remark the absence of the solid bodies 
who then marched with military precision and with a bold and resolute 
air, which seemed to challenge comparison with the disciplined forces of 
the Crown." 

The writer truly depicts by this procession the state of Ireland then and 
now, the work of legal and moral agitation ; it has sapped the revolutionary 
energy of the young men. The surrender of the leading men of the old 
school to the doctrine of talk had produced these sad and disheartening 
results spoken of by the writer and plainly visible even in a procession. 
The people were publicly taught to follow this gigantic fraud " moral 
and legal agitation " to coax England to surrender her control of Ire- 
land to Irishmen. 

At the foot of the statue was a raised dais for those who were to- 
take part in the ceremonies of the day : Lord Mayor Dawson, High 
Sheriff Gray, Mr. Parnell, and other prominent Irishmen. One of the 
most conspicuous of these was The O'Gorman Mahon, who seconded the 
nomination of O'Connell at the remarkable Clare election. 

Lord Mayor Dawson, M. P., delivered a magnificent address on 
O'Connell and his times ; two paragraphs are here quoted : 

" It is owing to the exertions of O'Connell in a most particular man- 
ner that to-day one of his co-religionists can wear the official robes of 
the Lord Mayor of the city of Dublin. 

" The very portals of the Imperial Legislature had previously been 
opened to the members of our faith." 

Of what benefit, Mr. Dawson, has been this concession you speak of to 
your people that it should continue to still further deceive them into the 
pursuit of these imaginary honors ? Has this concession, as you think 
and term it, started one loom in Ireland, or lifted one fetter of tyranny 
from off the Irish breast ? You know it has not. Even at the present 
time of writing the Lord Mayor of Dublin (T. D. Sullivan) in this year 
1887 is imprisoned, sentenced to two months for publishing the announce- 
ment of a meeting of men who call themselves the " National League," 
and whose whole programme for the freedom of Ireland consists in 
denouncing the British Government, and passing resolutions against 
the acts of tyranny performed daily by that Government, and loudly 
protesting against the murders of their countrymen. This organization 
has offended the powers that be, and Ireland's Lord Mayor is sent to 
jail because he, forsooth, published an account of their proceedings and 
of their speeches. 

Does he wear the insignia of his office in prison in honor of the 
great benefits O'Connell showered upon him ? 



43° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The portals of that Legislature which Mr. Dawson calls " Imperial " 
have been opened by the great O'Connell. What a doubtful blessing to 
Ireland. " What a great victory." Ireland should rejoice ! One year 
before this Mr. Dawson and thirty-five other Irishmen were turned out of 
that Legislature by the instructions of the " Grand Old Man." Is it possible 
that these courteous gentlemen, of such varied literary attainments and 
ability, and the soul of social enjoyments, are deprived of all true man- 
hood — that a craven, degrading and coward spirit animates their frames ? 
Yes, yes ! it must not be forgotten the influence that the British Parlia- 
ment has had in corrupting and destroying any spark of manly dignity 
or Irish patriotism that ever animated them. 

Mr. Parnell was loudly called for ; he came forward, oh ! so changed. 
The Phoenix Park tragedy and his imprisonment were noticeable in his 
nervous, twitching manner and gait. Gone were the dash and energy 
once possessed by the grandson of Old Ironsides. His carelessness in 
appearance, which has developed so much lately, was noticeable. He 
spoke a few words, tried to be hopeful : it was but the sickly echo of 
other days. 

Very many good Irishmen, truly patriotic, sincerely believe in that 
great man Daniel O'Connell as a Nationalist. Let there be quoted for 
them the words of an undoubted Irish patriot, one who believed with 
William Tell, and who would neither doff his hat nor bend his knee to 
Gessler Gladstone nor any British statesman — John Mitchel : 

" At the head of that open and legal agitation was a man of giant 
proportions in body and in mind ; with no profound learning, not even 
indeed in his own profession of law, but with a vast and varied knowledge 
of human nature in all its strength, and especially in all its weakness ; 
with a voice like thunder and earthquake, yet musical and soft at will as 
the song of birds ; with a genius and fancy tempestuous, playful, cloudy, 
fiery, mournful, merry, lofty, arid mean by turns as the mood was on him — 
a humor broad, bacchant, riant, genial, and jovial ; with profound and 
spontaneous natural feeling, and superhuman and subterhuman passions ; 
yet, withal, a boundless fund of masterly affectation and consummate 
histrionism — hating and loving heartily, outrageous in his merriment, and 
passionate in his lamentation. He had the power to make other men hate 
or love, laugh or weep, at his good pleasure — insomuch that Daniel 
O'Connell, by virtue of being more entirely Irish, carrying to a more 
extravagant pitch all Irish strength and passion and weakness, than other 
Irishmen, led and swayed his people by a kind of divine or else diabolic 
right. He led them, as 1 believe, all wrong for forty years. 

" He was a lawyer, and never could come to the point of denying and 
defying all British law. He was a Catholic, sincere and devout, and 
would not see that the Church had ever been the enemy of Irish freedom. 
He was an aristocrat by position and by taste, and the name of a republic 
was odious to him. Moreover, his success as a Catholic agitator ruined 
both him and his country. By mere agitation, by harmless exhibition of 
numerical force, by imposing demonstrations (which are fatal nonsense), 
and by eternally half unsheathing a visionary sword, which friends and 
foes knew alike to be a phantom, he had, as he believed, coerced the 
British Government to pass a relief bill, and admit Catholics to Parlia- 
ment and some offices. 

" Poor old Dan ! Wonderful, mighty, jovial, and mean old man, 
with silver tongue and smile of witchery, and heart of melting ruth — 
lying tongue, smile of treachery, heart of unfathomable fraud ! What a 
royal yet vulgar soul, with the keen eye and potent sweep of a generous 
eagle of Cairn Tual — with the base servility of a hound and the cold 



THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY. 431 

cruelty of a spider. Think of his speech for John Magee, the most 
powerful forensic achievement since before Demosthenes, and think of 
the ' gorgeous and gossamer ' theory of moral and peaceful agitation, the 
most astounding organum of public swindling since first man bethought 
him of obtaining money under false pretenses. And after one has 
thought of all this, and more, what can a man say ? What but pray that 
Irish earth may lie light on O'Connell's breast, and that the good God, 
who knew how to create so wondrous a creature, may have mercy on his 
soul." 

And we heartily and prayerfully say Amen to Ireland's true patriot, 
whose noble soul was wrung with anguish many a time to see the follies 
by which Irishmen aim to serve their country. To-day Ireland is 
inflicted with a repetition of O'Connell's movement, but one that 
started out with brighter hopes. The manhood of Ireland thought it 
would, like the United Irishmen's legal and moral open agitation, become 
a moral and truly legal — in an Irish, not an alien sense — movement 
following in the footsteps of George Washington, and that its leader, like 
Wolfe Tone, would devote all his energies to the salvation of his country, 
Ireland. Instead it has fallen back into the O'Connell groove of perpetual 
talk ; it is now in its senility and dotage, depending for success on the 
smiles of an aged Englishman whom all its leaders bitterly and justly 
denounced. But, worst of all, it has instilled its poison into the young 
manhood at home, many of whom are steeped heart and soul in this 
doctrine of arguing English rule away. 

The new engine of torture that was invented by the diabolic side of 
the Premier statesmanship, the " Crimes Bill," was now about to be put 
into practice, and the most astounding and infamous of crimes were to be 
enacted in the light of day, sanctioned by the pirate rule of Britain. 
Murder was about to be perpetrated by the invader's myrmidons under 
the outward forms and ceremonies of law. It was not alone that the 
courts were illegal, having no authority for their existence in Ireland 
but the mandate of a foreign government ; but even according to the 
enemy's own supposed authority they were an outrage and a lie on any- 
thing that men could call justice. So glaring and brutal was the system 
of manufacturing what was termed evidence, and the packing of hostile 
Irish traitors as jurymen — that the jurors selected were prepared to bring 
in any verdict that the enemy's lawyers required. Men also sat on the 
bench who represented that foreign law, and who went there with the 
deliberate purpose of hanging and imprisoning any men arraigned before 
them, utterly indifferent as to whether these men were associated with 
the so-called offenses or crimes charged against them. The enemy's 
object was to strike terror into the community, and make his rule so 
feared, if not respected, that the Irish serfs would not dare to dream of 
any opposition to his sway, but would bow and cringe inwardly as they 
did outwardly through their weak-nerved Provincial leaders. 

The manufactured and perjured testimony which British gold and 
British corruption bred among the dregs of the population was appalling, 
using as their tools the vilest and most atrocious scoundrels — wretches 
who were always infamous in their private lives; these witness concocted 
vile stories, or they were prepared for them by the enemy's lawyers for 
the deliberate purpose of sending Irishmen to the scaffold. These 
perjurers never had any association with the events that they were trained 
to swear to. These polluted tools of British law, these " saviors of society" 
as it is organized under the pirate flag of Ireland's invader, were put 
before mankind as Crown witnesses for a twofold purpose. In the first 
instance, their evidence gave the enemy a colorable reason for murder- 
ing certain Irishmen whom he suspected of hostility to his rule, or 



43 2 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

else that he considered necessary to hang, to impress upon the people of 
a district his great power and the vengeance which was certain to follow 
the violation of his code of laws. But his second reason was even of 
more import to his rule. He wished to break down confidence among 
Irishmen, one with another, and to show the uneducated and unthinking 
masses that all associations and combinations against his rule in the 
country are permeated with treason, and that the patriot ranks are filled 
with British spies. This black and damning lie, which Irish Nationalists 
know to be as false as the hearts of the wretches who conceived it, has 
been of incalculable service to the British enemy and of terrific destruction 
to the Irish cause. There are men in Ireland to-day who, if this was true 
or even wore the semblance of truth, would long since have been put to 
death by the foe, and others who would be to-day toiling in the enemy's 
dungeons. It is with the full, complete, and perfect knowledge that this 
statement of the enemy is an infamous lie, that these brave Irishmen 
remain toiling in the patriot ranks under the pirate flag of the enemy, 
thoroughly convinced that not one of their comrades would betray them 
to the foe for all the gold in the British Treasury. These hired, per- 
jured wretches put forward during this Crimes Act Special Com- 
mission never had a spark of patriotism in their filthy souls, although 
the enemy paraded them before mankind as informers to blacken 
the character of the men who combine against his rule, and coupled 
with this degradation they enabled him to give a semblance of 
legality to the crimes he was about to commit against the unhappy 
men he had selected as victims. Some of these wretched perjurers 
were terrorized into giving evidence by some police constable seeking 
promotion and reward, and then turned over to the skilled care of 
Bolton, the Crown solicitor, who carefully drilled the witnesses. Many 
of these abominable creatures, when free from the grasp of the police and 
the lawyer, felt a remorse for their wicked conduct ; some ray of their 
early innocence dawned upon their blackened lives. They sought out 
their religious advisers, and under their advice made a public confession 
of their guilt and of their complete ignorance of the various transactions 
which they so circumstantially swore to in the enemy's court house, giv- 
ing publicity to the system by which they were trained to commit the foul 
crimes they practiced on the witness table. These retractions were 
brought to the notice of the British pirate chief in Ireland, Spencer, by in 
one instance no less an authority than a Roman Catholic archbishop, but 
this British criminal, acting under the instructions and authority of his 
master, the sleek and wily William Ewart Gladstone, would not even 
grant a respite to reopen the evidence, but deliberately, willfully, and 
knowingly sent to their graves men who had taken no part whatever in the 
alleged offenses charged against them. This is a serious and solemn 
charge and likely to shock the minds of those who, by previous preju- 
dices and preconceived impressions, are not in a condition to receive the 
truth. Of so great a depth is this infamy foreign rule in Ireland that the 
plainly stated facts appear incredible to those who are blest with the 
glorious freedom of this Grand Republic. It is like the glare of the 
noonday sun on the eyes of a man confined in a dark and gloomy 
dungeon. 

The present writer in arraigning before the high court of mankind the 
black and foul crime of alien rule in his country, and in showing by what 
demoniac contrivances the invader tries to fasten his destructive rule 
upon it, feels that he cannot filter this light, but must use harsh and con- 
demnatory language in trying to publicly expose a system more hateful 
than the Inquisition, more barbarous than the rule of the Turk in Bulgaria, 
more abominable and more detestable than the infamies of a Nero or a 



THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY. 433 

Caligula, because of the skilled hypocrisy by which Ireland's relentless 
enemies, Tory or Radical (it is immaterial which faction rules), try to 
corrupt, ruin, and destroy the inhabitants of the island they have impov- 
erished and degraded by their rule. He wishes to show liberty-loving 
and just people that if ever there lived a race under God's sunlight 
justified in revolting against tyranny, justified in the eyes of the Deity 
and all mankind in resorting to all and every melhod of destroying 
their barbarous and inhuman persecutors, who are seeking to drag Irish 
intellect to the level of the brute creation, that people to-day is the Irish 
race. There can be no possible compromise with this hideous crime. 
The unspeakable Briton must leave Ireland bag and baggage. 

So palpable was the enormity of the offenses committed by the Brit- 
ish courts in Ireland at this period that they shocked the Provincial 
organs, and even compelled the Provincial leader, in spite of his secret 
alliance proffered to and accepted by Mr. Gladstone, to denounce the 
hideousness of these offenses. 

The Special Commission opened in Green Street, Dublin, early in 
August, 1882. 

The Dublin Freeman s Journal, in its issue of August nth, in its 
editorial column comments on these trials : 

" Yesterday at the Commission Court the first jury trial under the 
Crimes Act took place. John O'Connor and three others, all natives of 
Kerry, were placed in the dock charged with, on the 17th of March last 
at Fahey in the county of Kerry, having attacked the house of Mrs. 
Murphy, the widow of an officer in the army. Under the ordinary law 
the men would have been tried in Kerry, where the alleged offense took 
place ; but availing himself of the provisions of the Crimes Act, the 
attorney-general moved the case to Dublin, and under the same measure a 
special jury was impaneled from a joint county and city panel. The Crown 
exercised its right to challenge on a wholesale scale, and no less than 
nineteen persons, some of them most respectable citizens, were ordered to 
' stand aside.' The facts of the case will be found reported elsewhere. 
All the prisoners were convicted, but the jury accompanied the finding with 
a strong recommendation for mercy, and sentence was deferred." 

The Dublin Freeman of the 12th of August, further alluding to these 
trials, observes : 

" We are unwilling to credit the rumor that the court has resolved 
that juries exclusively or almost exclusively Protestant shall determine 
in some cases the liberty, in others the lives, of the prisoners on 
trial at Green Street. Yet color is lent to the report by the fact 
that yesterday in the capital case, just as on the previous day in 
the Whiteboy case, Catholic gentlemen of admitted respectability and 
position were ordered to ' stand aside ' when they took the book to be 
sworn. To the gentlemen in question no stereotyped trade objection can 
be alleged, and the inference therefore is that they were shoved aside 
from their duties as jurors simply because they are Catholics. If this is 
true an odious and, it was hoped, obsolete practice has been revived, and 
the course, if taken, as unnecessary as it is injudicious, must naturally 
cause indignation and resentment in Catholic circles. The notion that 
such men as Edward Lenehan of Castle Street, William Dennehy of 
John Street, and others whom we could mention could not be trusted 
to find a true verdict according to evidence in county cases brought 
to Dublin for trial, which is the simple and only inference, is offensive 
in the extreme. The representatives of the Crown could not venture to 
publicly make such a declaration. Yet the names of the gentlemen 
specified appear in the public list of the rejected. The matter is one that 
calls for inquiry and explanation. For the present we will only express 



434 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

our regret that the representatives of the Crown should deem it neces- 
sary and expedient to boycott Catholic special jurors of the city and 
county of Dublin. That this has been done we fear there is no doubt, 
and we apprehend that no other interpretation of the action of the Crown 
can be given than that Catholic gentlemen are subjected to the shocking 
imputation that they are not unprepared to violate the solemn obligations 
of their oath in cases which are supposed to arise out of political agita- 
tion in the country. 

" Would the managers of the Crown prosecutions in Green Street dare 
openly to make such an accusation ? " 

It is difficult to characterize this article ; it was evidently written by 
a narrow-minded bigot, a serf and slave to foreign rule in Ireland. 
Is it an Irish Catholic gentleman's duty any more than an Irish Protestant 
gentleman's to perform England's office in upholding her monstrous 
system in Ireland ? These gentlemen who were told to " stand aside " 
were honored by the request. They were loyal Irishmen, and not rebels 
and traitors to Ireland, whom the enemy could count on returning 
what verdict suited the almighty majesty of the usurping foreigner and 
his courts in the country. They were not told to " stand aside " because 
they were Catholics, but because the enemy believed them honest Irish- 
men, who would not stain their souls in his degrading service. It 
has been proven to the satisfaction of Irishmen, even of those who hold 
narrow and bigoted views, that England's hirelings hugged to their heart 
any Catholic as well as Protestant who would do her work of infamy in 
the island of the Gaels. 

The Nationalists of Ireland had been struggling for years to remove 
the monstrous British lie that Irish nationality meant nothing but sub- 
serviency to one particular form of Christian worship, and that it also 
meant persecution, if successful, to all non-Catholics. In the history 
of falsehoods which have been circulated and believed in by deluded 
mankind there has been no more atrocious and wicked lie than 
this British mendacity, except its counterpart, which is equally mis- 
chievous — Mr. Gladstone's " Home Rule," which will be spoken of 
further on. The great heart of Ireland is throbbing with love and devo- 
tion to all her children ; she knows no difference between them, be they 
but honest, leal, and true. Irish Nationalists, sincere, pious, and faithful 
Catholics as many of them are, would rise up in indignation and repu- 
diation if any such unheard of doctrine as the British enemy preaches 
were attempted to be put in practice : the faintest hint of prejudice 
against their non-Catholic fellow-countrymen. They revere and respect 
the memory of their great Irish Protestant patriots, whom England done 
to death for loyalty to their native land. No, Protestant fellow country- 
men, your Catholic brothers say to you : 

We have no curse for you and yours, 

But friendship's ready grasp, 
And faith to stand by you and yours 

Unto our latest gasp — 
To stand by you against all foes, 

Howe'er or whence they come, 
With traitor arts, or bribes, or blows, 

From England, France, or Rome. 

We do not hate, we never cursed, 

Nor spoke a foeman's word 
Against a man in Ireland nursed, 

Howe'er we thought he erred ; 
So start not, Irish-born man 

If you're to Ireland true ; 
We heed not race, nor creed, nor clan, 

We've hearts and hands for you. 



THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY. 435 

The following letter, published in the Dublin Freeman, explains itself : 

" THE JURY IN THE ENNIS MURDER CASE. 

" Imperial Hotel, Dublin, August 13, 1882. 
" Dear Sir : I think the public ought to be made aware of the fol- 
lowing facts : The jury in the murder case of The Queen v. Hynes were 
last night ' locked up,' as it is termed, for the night at the Imperial Hotel, 
where I also was staying. I was awakened from sleep shortly after 
midnight by the sounds of a drunken chorus, succeeded after a time by 
scuffling, rushing, coarse laughter, and horse-play. Along the corridor 
on which my bedroom opened a number of men, it seemed to me, were 
falling about the passage in a maudlin state of drunkenness, playing 
ribald jokes. I listened with patience for a considerable time, when the 
door of my bedroom was burst open, and a man whom I can identify 
(for he carried a candle unsteadily in his hand) staggered in, plainly 
under the influence of drink, hiccupping, 'Halloa, old fellow, all alone?' 
My answer was of a character that induced him to bolt out of the room 
in as disordered a manner as he had entered. Having rung the bell, I 
ascertained that these disorderly persons were jurors in the case of The 
Queen v. Hynes, and that the servants of the hotel had been endeavoring 
in vain to bring them to a sense of their misconduct. I thought it right 
to convey to them a warning that the public would hear of those pro- 
ceedings. The disturbance then ceased. It is fair to add that not more 
than three or four men appeared to be engaged in the roaring and in the 
tipsy horse-play that followed. I leave the public to judge the loath- 
someness of such a scene upon the night when these men held the issues 
of life and death for a young man in the flower of youth, when they had 
already heard evidence which, if unrebutted, they must have known 
would send him to a felon's grave. These facts I am ready to support 
on oath. 

" William O'Brien." 

This description, so graphically given, describe the class of men who 
performed the mockery of trial over Irishmen whose political views were 
inimical to the stranger's rule, and who were arrested to glut the venge- 
ance of the gentle and peace-loving Mr. Gladstone, who was the high 
priest of the oracle "justice to Ireland." The "Grand Old Man" could 
have said at this time with Macbeth : 

I am in blood 
Stept in so far that, should I wade no more, 
Returning were as tedious as go o'er. 

Many Irishmen will remember the recent case of the killing of Head 
Constable Whelehan in a contest with some peasant laborers who call 
themselves "Moonlighters," and of the evidence of a suborned perjurer 
named Callanan. Some men with conveniently short memories held up 
their hands in horror at the infamies of the brutal Tories — and brutal 
they are and have been. Some English Liberals denounced the Tory 
Government for the hiring of this degraded wretch. This self-convicted 
thief Callanan was first engaged under the Government of the sanctimoni- 
ous Mr. Gladstone, and during this scarlet regime very probably per- 
formed some secret infamies for his paymasters, they not requiring him 
on the witness table. He was one of the infamous legacies which the Tories 
took over from Mr. Gladstone when, with Irish rejoicing, it came to be 
their turn to take the reins of office. 

The red earl and his entourage in the government of Ireland were 



436 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLKS. 

indignant at Mr. Gray for publishing such an expose" of their hanging 
machinery, and notwithstanding the two blessings — as Mr. Dawson would 
term them — which the great O'Connell gave to the Irish people and 
which they conferred upon Mr. Gray — namely, High Sheriff of the city 
of Dublin, and a member of the " Imperial " Legislature, he was brought 
before the commission, presided over by that Solomon and Daniel 
comprised in one man Judge Lawson, whose memory to Irishmen is as 
pure (?) as his judgments were just (J). Before his Lordship he was 
arraigned, we cannot say for judgment — for that decision was no doubt 
settled at the privy council of Castle conspirators of which this tyrannic 
judge was a member — but for sentence. 

The following scene took place in court : 

Mr. Gray. " Therefore the solicitor-general may have something to 
say if I prove that these jurors misconducted themselves. Was it not my 
duty as a public journalist, being informed they had heen drinking in the 
public billiard room, and " 

Judge Lawson (interrupting angrily). " I think you had better not 
make any statement of the kind, for it will not at all assist your case." 

Mr. Gray. " I will not follow up those statements further." 

Judge Lawson. "I believe them to be totally devoid of truth. It 
was a most respectable jury, and the foreman said all were perfectly sober, 
and I believe him." 

Mr. Gray. " My Lord " 

The Judge. " Mr. Gray, you had better not repeat these statements 
at all. If an action for libel were brought against the man who wrote 
this article, then you might be justified in trying to justify your action, 
but in the present instance you are not. The charge is that you com- 
mitted a contempt of court by writing these statements." 

Mr. Barrett of Kingstown (the foreman of the jury). " The jury 
courts the fullest inquiry into their conduct." 

Mr. William O'Brien. " As writer of the letter I wish " 

His Lordship. " Sit down, sir." 

Mr. Gray tried to justify his position before Norbury the third 
— his Lordship Keogh being the second bearer of that judicial Irish title — 
but he might as well have tried to get back the snow which fell in his 
childhood. His sentence was decreed in the Castle. 

Mr. William O'Brien. " Do justice to Mr. Gray." 

His Lordship. " Remove that man ; he has no right to be there 
at all." 

Mr. O'Brien. " My Lord " 

His Lordship. " Remove him at once from the court." 

A police constable then touched Mr. O'Brien on the shoulder and he 
arose and left the court. 

Judge Lawson then proceeded to pass sentence on Mr. Gray. After a 
long preamble he said : 

" I therefore feel bound, in the exercise of the undoubted discretion 
which is vested in me, both to imprison and fine. Accordingly the 
sentence of the court is that (it appearing that these articles committed 
contempt of court) you Edmund Dwyer Gray be imprisoned for the 
term of three calendar months, and pay a fine to her Majesty the Queen 
of ,£500, and after the termination of that three months to give securities 
(yourself in ^5000 and two securities in ^"2500 each) to be of good 
behavior and to keep the peace for the term of six months, or in default 
to be imprisoned for a further term of three months. 

" Let Mr. Gray be now taken into custody." 

The officials of the court were puzzled what to do ; there was no prec- 
edent for thus arbitrarily arresting a High Sheriff; but the instructions of 



THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY. 437 

the amiable Judge Lawson were from a higher source and from a man 
equally as amiable and just, the sanctimonious Mr. Gladstone. The order 
was repeated in still more peremptory tones. Thus Mr. E. D. Gray, High 
Sheriff and Imperial Legislator — which honors O'Connell had opened up 
to him — had to go to prison, for that great Irishman whom Mr. Gray and 
his friends were doing honor to a few days previous by unveiling his 
statue had by some oversight neglected to place a barrier between Irish- 
men and arbitrary arrest, so that Mr. O'ConnelPs " Imperial " Legislators 
have often since, and recently, aired these honors as inmates of a jail. 

Mr. Gray, a loyal subject of the house of Hanover, and who always 
scolded those wicked physical force men, and tried to lecture them into a 
fitting state of respect and reverence for the authority of that good and 
great Hanoverian lady who wears the crown of the Guelphs — Mr. Gray 
was sent off to Richmond Bridewell escorted by a troop of Hussars, and 
there he was taught that wholesome moral lesson " Cease to do evil, learn 
to do well." 

Mr. Gray's paper the Freeman complained that Catholic jurors 
were told to stand aside. That they were so told is unquestioned, but, as 
stated, it was not because of their religion, but because of their National 
tendencies or supposed National tendencies in the eyes of these gangrened 
employees of the " Grand Old Man." The foreman of Francis Hynes' 
jury, Mr. James Barrett, J. P., who so heroically defended his brothe* 
jurors was a Catholic of the Catholics. He was the devoted servant and 
faithful friend of his Eminence Cardinal McCabe, the then Archbishop of 
Dublin. No man could look with more horror than he did upon Orange- 
men ; he hated them as a faithful henchman of Mr. Gladstone and as a 
West-British Liberal, and he looked upon them with horror as a zealous 
son of the Church. 

And yet this devilishly cunning system — British rule in Ireland — 
has so manipulated the training and education of these opposing ele- 
ments, pandering to the prejudices and the bigotry of both ; it has so 
successfully blinded both with false and lying teachings — teachings in- 
stilled into them from childhood — that they emulated each other in their 
worship of that foe to their country's prosperity, the rule of England. 
Each of these upholders of British law and order was always ready, when 
necessary, to fly at each other's throats, because they were maddened and 
made insane by the fatal drug which the Briton administered to them for 
his own vile purposes. The Freeman and other Catholic journals com- 
plain, in true West-British style, that their co-religionists are not asked 
to do England's degrading offices. They are always not only invited, but 
given the robe of honor when they present themselves, as they did in the 
person of Mr. Barrett. For the " ruler of the waves " cares nothing 
about their forms of worship, whether Buddhists, Mohammedans, or idol- 
ators. The religion Britain wants is loyal and dutiful obedience to her 
laws and respect for her flag. 

This assize, over which Norbury the third, Judge Lawson, presided, 
produced a generous supply of perjury on the part of the witnesses, an 
equal abundance of prejudice and cringing servility on the part of the jury, 
and of bitter, unrelenting partisanship on the part of the judge, who was 
also one of the Executive Council who ordered these arrests which he 
was to go through the mockery of trying. This assize turned out victims 
for the scaffold and dungeon enough for one short, maiden effort of the 
Crimes machine, which must have made glad the heart of the benevolent 
Mr. Gladstone, from whom all blessings flow to Ireland. 

The following was the list of work the Prime Minister's patent turned 
out : 

Francis Hynes, to be hanged September n in Limerick jail ; Patrick 



43 s THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINC1BLES. 

Walsh, to be hanged September 22, Galway jail ; Captain Rorke, penal 
servitude, sixteen years ; Maurice Costello, Richard Savage, and John 
Cromien, ten years' penal servitude ; Luke Kenny, penal servitude for 
life ; John Kinsella, twenty years' penal servitude ; Jeremiah Duggan 
and William Brosnin, ten and fifteen years respectively ; George Ward, 
seven years' penal servitude ; and Michael Walsh, to be executed in 
Galway jail October 28. 

The offenses these men were charged with were not crimes of the 
ordinary kind ; they were the outcome of the condition of Ireland 
under despotic alien laws, and the men arrested and convicted — even to 
death — were not the actual perpetrators of these alleged crimes. 

Mr. Gladstone's agent of peace to Ireland, the man whom it was said 
would bring an era of happiness in exchange for Forster's tyranny — this 
man, then irreverently called by Mr. T. D. Sullivan and Mr. O'Brien 
" Foxy Jack," must have known he was sending men to the scaffold who 
were wholly innocent of the offenses charged against them. He was not 
only made aware of this by men of National tendencies, but by the 
most ultra-loyaliststo Victoria's throne. Instance Canon Pope of Dublin, 
who, like Mr. Lynch of Elphin, no doubt believed her Sacred British 
Majesty the greatest monarch since the days of Alfred the Great. 

Canon Pope stormed the viceregal throne with his petitions of mercy 
for Francis Hynes. But all in vain ; the red earl had to do his master's 
duty, to strike terror into the disaffected Irish. Innocent or guilty, some- 
one must hang to glut British Liberal vengeance. The red earl came to 
celebrate Mr. Parnell's great victory, and he was carrying out his mission 
in a gratifying manner according to the Premier's instructions. The men 
who were witnesses against these prisoners were hired perjurers of the 
Callanan type, who swore to order, whether they knew anything of these 
cases or not. Some of them out of some species of remorse publicly 
retracted their statements, and although it was proven to the satisfaction 
of any man open to conviction that these men's testimony was a hideous, 
black, blistering, murderous lie, yet the men were hanged, and the 
others, also innocent, were and are still incarcerated in penal dungeons. 
Although Mr. Gladstone enjoyed six months' term of office in 1886, when 
he posed as a " Home Rule " Premier and savior of Ireland, he did not 
release from prison these falsely convicted men. 

Mr. William O'Brien in his paper went so far as to state that Lord 
Spencer hanged these men full well knowing at the time they were inno- 
cent, but that he wanted victims. In this very strong statement he was 
indorsed by his Parliamentary colleagues, and there is no reason, as 
already stated, to doubt the truth of this most damning statement. 

This was the opening of that new regime of peace which American 
Irishmen, on the platform and in the columns of their leading organs, 
hailed as a great victory, and which the people at home turned out with 
bands to cheer their countrymen with the music of their rejoicings, but 
which the continued sanguinary rule of the divine William marred by the 
groans of mangled and murdered children in Ballina, and various brutal 
assaults on bandsmen over the country. 

It may be said that the Phoenix Park tragedy caused this change in 
the Premier. Facts, not opinions, contradict this. The offenses alleged 
against these innocent men had neither connection with nor relation in 
any way to that historic event. The offenses they were charged with 
were those which arose from the land struggles and retaliation for cruel 
injuries, all of which were the offspring of alien misgovernment. They 
were not in any sense intended as an opposition to the rule which was the 
author of all these cruel distresses, nor could they in any manner affect 
that rule. They were the fruit of foul injuries done under the name of 



THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY. '439 

law, and against which the perpetrators struck in the person of that 
law's agents, whether as the law's administrators or the recipients of 
some benefits unjustly acquired. The victims were in nearly all cases 
Irish peasants with the grasping miserly habits engendered by centuries 
of poverty and all its attendant evils and the degradation which foreign 
rule has tried to instill into the souls of Irishmen. It was what might be, 
and has been, called the " wild justice of revenge." 

Irish Nationalists have never made such internal semi-social struggles 
any part of their programme; on the contrary, during Fenian days, many 
of these small local societies, organized to resent the foul injustices done 
them, were broken up and merged into the great organization then pre- 
paring to fight Britain for independence. 

Every National leader has always had results in view whenever action 
was taken. In the rescues it was not alone to free their imprisoned 
brethren, but to give morale and prestige to the movement — a morale, in 
the humble judgment of many, better given by striking the foe. When 
Irishmen think of the hecatomb of crimes which foreign rule has engen- 
dered and still produces in that beautiful western island which God gave 
to their forefathers, it is no wonder that they cherish feelings of bitter 
hostility against the ruthless inhabitants of the neighboring island that 
have so insolently and wantonly invaded their country. This invader's 
career is marked by blood from the day the first Anglo-Norman stepped 
upon the Irish shore to the last insolent assertion of usurped authority, 
imprisoning the people at his good will and pleasure. 

Out upon the cant and moral cowardice of Irishmen who secretly 
rejoice at blows struck at this cruel foe and who outwardly condemn any 
action taken against British rule in Ireland. Have you not, good friends, 
begged and whined long enough ? If you think differently be it so. 
There are men who will not be of your belief, good, gentle Irish brothers. 
And as you are for peace at any price, out with your handkerchiefs and 
weep more of those melting tears. Perhaps the grim Saxon foe will fling 
you your island out of pity for your dolorous woe. 

This bloody assize was the opening of gentle John Poyntz's mild 
sway, which was only different from Forster's by its quadrupled cruelty. 
Where Mr. Forster arrested as a " suspect," my Lord Spencer arrested 
with the full determination, right or wrong, if not to punish the actual 
perpetrators of these alleged local crimes, to at least hang or imprison 
somebody, no matter whom if he was a hostile Irishman. And behind these 
Irish tragic scenes sat England's gentle Premier, Mr. Gladstone, guiding 
and controlling his Irish lambs. The good shepherd sat playing the 
same soft, dulcet strains to which the lamb-like Mr. Forster danced. 
He had now attuned his pipes to a sylvan measure, which the red earl 
ambled to with grace and ease, and the judges, juries, and perjurers 
treaded the goodly measure in excellent time, in such perfection that the 
courthouse dock became a very shambles, and Mr. Marwood (the com- 
mon hangman) also ambled with such vigor that the gentle English 
shepherd's victims were bowed into eternity. 

United Ireland thus speaks of Judge Lawson's Special Commission in 
an article entitled 

" THE BLOODY ASSIZE. 

" The jury was shamefully concocted, its partisanship was indecent, 
and the evidence was evidence upon which an English jury would not 
hang a dog." 

Mr. O'Brien probably forgets that England is self-governed. No 
foreign flag flies over Britain, no foreign soldiery tramp British streets. 
England is not cursed with native renegade hirelings in the foreigner's 



44° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

pay to strangle her liberties. Ireland enjoys all these foreign luxuries, 
and so there is no use complaining. Words will not shatter the chains, 
though it is well to expose these infamies ; but let us not think that 
exposure is enough. Mr. O'Brien very properly was determined to 
expose the infamous government of Mr. Gladstone. There is nothing 
written so strong as this article from United Ireland .• 

" ACCUSING SPIRITS. 

" ' Of the fact that since his condemnation and previous to Saturday 
last he declared that he was innocent of the murder there is not the slight- 
est doubt.' — Freeman's report of Francis Hynes. ' I am going now to my 
doom ; going before my Maker. I have to declare my innocence of the 
murder.' — Patrick Walsh on the gallows, September 22. ' I do not deserve 
it ; there is no claim against me. The day will come when, sooner or 
later, you shall account for my innocent life.' — Michael Walsh as he was 
sentenced to death, September 29. ' I leave it now to God and the 
Virgin that I never lifted hand or foot, or anything else against that 
man, and 1 leave it to the court to do what it likes with me.' — Patrick Hig- 
gins on being sentenced to death, December 13. 'I am going before my 
God. I am as innocent as a child in the cradle.' — Myles Joyce on the 
gallows, December 15. ' On my oath I never fired a shot at John Huddy, 
nor Joseph Huddy, nor any other man since the day I was born. Kerri- 
gan has sworn falsely.' — Thomas Higgins on being sentenced to death, 
December 16. ' I can solemnly swear that I am as clear of that deed as 
any man who ever drew breath. This is a slaughtering house. I am as 
glad to go to my God as to my home and family.' — Michael Flynn on 
being sentenced to death, December 20, 1882. 

" Two of these men spoke from the gallows with the noose round their 
necks. They were unquestionably Catholics. One moment more and if 
the protestations on their lips were a lie they knew they were stepping 
into an eternity of torment. The world's opinion was to them a feather- 
weight. The rustle of the unseen was falling mysteriously on their ears. 
Which are we to trust — the last words of man after man as he faces the 
All-seeing Judge, or the verdicts of tribunals carefully concocted to ' con- 
vict murderers by hook or crook ' ? There was an old-fashioned maxim 
of the Books, " Better ninety-nine guilty ones should escape than one 
innocent man should suffer." The theory of the manipulator of the 
Crimes Act seems to be that somebody must be hanged — the right person 
if possible, but at all events somebody. Mistakes will occur, but out of 
any given half-dozen victims, though there may be one or two who 
do not deserve hanging, there will almost certainly be one or two who do. 
Better in any case that a garrulous peasant should be kicked into 
eternity by Mr. Marwood than that the detective police should acknowl- 
edge itself baffled and cream-faced loyalists go about in terror of their 
lives. It is impossible to study the trials and scaffold scenes of the 
past few months without putting this humble construction upon them. 
If Higgins, or Walsh, or Joyce, or Flynn had the fair trial by their peers 
which has been the proud right of the meanest churl in England since 
the days of Runnymede their dying protestations need not have troubled 
the rest of the public. We desire to avoid exaggerated language, for 
we recognize the gravity of the subject and our responsibility ; but our 
attachment to the elementary principles of justice impels us to deliber- 
ately say that both as to the tribunal and as to the evidence, the proceed- 
ings against these men bear an indelible taint of foul play ! 

"Upon their trials the ordinary detective machinery — vigilance, re- 
source, ingenuity to discover the scraps of evidence, the intelligence to piece 



THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY. 441 

them together — counted for little. Packed juries and bribed witnesses 
were the all-sufficient implements of justice. Anybody can govern with a 
state of siege, or win with loaded dice, or hang with obstructed machinery. 
When the art of trying a man consists in picking out of the panel twelve 
of his deadly enemies, and the production of evidence means chiefly the 
getting at the worst side of the veriest villain in the community and 
humbly consulting his prepossessing as to the reward and the little 
precaution necessary to make the bed of the informer a bed of velvet, 
verdicts of guilty and hanging may be had in any desired quantity. But 
if this is moral government in the Victorian era why cut Strafford's head 
off for tampering with Irish juries, or strike King James's crown away 
for influencing the English ones, or hold Torquemada accursed because 
he did with hot pincers what the great and good Earl Spencer does with 
bags of gold ? What is worst about the White Terror set up in Green 
Street is the ghastly pretense that it is all done to save the sacred right 
of trial by jury in Ireland, that it is necessary to pack juries, that we 
have no juries at all, that it is better to convict upon paid swearing than 
to adopt drumhead ideas of evidence. Out upon the imposture ! that the 
trials of the last few months are trials by jury such as Englishmen bled 
to maintain. We solemnly declare that the sooner we have the tribunal 
of the three judges or the rough-and-ready justice of the court-martial 
the better for public decency and for the accused themselves. An Alex- 
andria telegram of last Friday tells us that near ' five hundred prisoners 
have been discharged for want of evidence.' In Alexandria they have 
the advantage of martial law. We wonder if these five hundred had been 
tried by packed juries of Levantine shopkeepers, and sums of ^5000 
dangled before every needy wretch that would come with obliging evi- 
dence, how many of the five hundred would have escaped the rope and 
boot of the Egyptian Mr. Marwood. Again we say the dying declarations 
affixed to this article may be all false, but they may be also, some of them or 
all of them, true, and the scandal — a scandal which would set England in a 
blaze if the victims were Sidneys or Russells, and not mere Gaelic-speaking 
mountaineers — is that there was nothing in the mode of trial to satisfy the 
public conscience that murder may but have been avenged by murder." 

These statements of dying men are sufficient to send a thrill of horror 
into the quiet and peaceful who live in this free land far away from these 
scenes of sanguinary strife. 

But after all we must reflect that it is England's mode of carrying 
on war in Ireland — the partisan judge, the packed jury, the bribed and 
perjured witnesses who learn their part by rote before they go on the 
witness table, and lastly the common hangmen. These are the cannon and 
rifles she uses to cut off the disaffected Celts, and to try and strike terror 
into her enemy, the Irish revolutionist. Nationalists think she will not 
be successful in this latter mission; they feel confident this terror, as 
England thinks it is, has little influence on their peace of mind. 
They accept this as war, and they expect Britain to be equally gen- 
erous and not howl so loudly next time she is struck. This pow- 
erful article of Mr. O'Brien was an excellent expose" of Mr. Gladstone's- 
amiable rule in Ireland, and so far as teaching mankind what a hypo- 
critical and cruel nation Ireland has to battle with it does good.. 
But then Irishmen must not think that this expos/ alone can serve 
them ; they must be up and doing. It is this thinking that an expose 
is material strength where they display weakness. True 'tis the effect 
of Provincial teaching. Mr. O'Brien's powerful article would be an 
unanswerable argument in a self-governing country that was tyrannized 
over by a section of its own people, but in Ireland's case, having to 



442 THE IRISH NATIONAL INV1NCIBLES. 

combat with a foreign nation, all such articles are worthless ; they will not 
remove one armed soldier from the soil of Ireland. Mr. O'Brien alludes 
to Magna Charta and speaks of Englishmen bleeding to preserve trial by 
jury. This is all very true, but Englishmen did not bleed to give trial by 
jury to the French nor to the Russians ; neither did they bleed to give it 
to the Irish. And if Irishmen wish this and other boons they must be 
prepared to do what Englishmen did — namely, bleed for its establishment. 
But at present they are taught to talk for it instead. Ireland is a country 
overrun by a foreign army, with a large number of her own renegade sons 
in the pay of the enemy assisting in trying to establish British rule there, 
which after seven centuries of bloody struggles is not yet quite com- 
pletely an accomplished fact. For Irishmen to recognize the mock con- 
stitutional form which British hypocrisy chooses to try and clothe her 
despotic rule with is not only arrant nonsense, but something closely 
approaching treason, particularly among educated men who profess to be 
Nationalists. What is the use of complaining of these packed juries and 
perjured witnesses ? They are a part of her machinery to do to death Irish- 
men, and which she in irony gives the title of trial. British rule carries 
on different kinds of hypocrisy in governing conquered countries as it 
suits its purpose. Justice or right has no place in these councils, unless 
it is her own standard of right, and this is regulated by British interests. 
In defense of these interests she went to Alexandria, and to Ireland, and 
to the Transvaal, and to every part of the globe where she could do a little 
profitable burglary. Her standard of right, her interests are the same as 
animate the pirate, the sneak thief, highwayman, and cracksman. They 
are all satisfied it is to their interest to do so and so, and they will if they 
can go on plundering. Fortunately for society there is a power that can 
step in here and put these self-interested gentlemen in jail. No one dreams 
of arguing them into surrender of their booty unless it is with a threat of 
force behind which these gentlemen know is a reality, and no sham. But 
in the case of nations there can be no going to jail in a concrete sense. 
Here we have two nations whose interests are distinctly antagonistic — 
Britain and Ireland. Ireland wants to go into business for herself, to 
give her people employment, so that they can live at home and without 
which she cannot exist. She wants to develop the soil of her fruitful and 
beautiful island ; to see the wings of commerce enter her spacious and 
magnificent harbors. So she pleads to her tyrant to permit her to go 
into housekeeping on her own account. Britain peremptorily answers no, 
for if Ireland could create these industrial interests, and put up looms 
and other machinery to supply her people with the numerous articles at 
present supplied by Britain, why, then, Britain would lose a good custo- 
mer, and would expect by and by to have Ireland as a competitor in the 
world's markets. And remember, some Irishmen expect that Britain is 
to do all this wonderful work for her, by coaxing, and what they term 
moral agitation. Look at this seriously, moral agitating friend, and you 
will, if you are a reasoning being, see the absurdity as well as the 
impossibility of such a piece of folly as you have been carrying on since 
the immortal Dan first charmed you with his wizard tones. You say you 
will get a little, and by and by you will get more. Will you ? Reflect 
seriously : have you had one — one single material concession from all the bills 
which passed the alien Legislature these eighty-seven years? You are 
more poverty-stricken to day than you were then. The enemy has per- 
mitted you to obtain modern improvements — railways, gas, and tele- 
graphs — but all these are useful to him to hold the island by force. You 
are permitted to worship where you like, and your clergy can dine if they 
so please at the tables of your masters. These are termed great conces- 
sions, but do they give you employment? 



THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY. 443 

You have had land laws passed through the British senate almost 
every decade, and yet evictions go on unceasingly. Your rents have been 
considerably reduced, but your produce has been reduced in value greater 
than your rent reduction. Where is there one streak on the political 
horizon, unless you fight in some way ? You say you cannot do this and 
you talk of England's great strength. Did the Americans reason this 
way, did the Boers, did the Swiss mountaineers ? Nations are not freed 
by cowards. David killed Goliath with a stone from a sling. There are 
many ways of crippling your enemy's power if you are determined to do so, 
and, above and beyond all, if you are prepared to face death and make 
sacrifices. Remember that this sacred undertaking is no holiday pastime ; 
if you enter into it in any such spirit you are sure to fail and bring the 
Briton's gibe and sneer upon your brave fellow-countrymen. If you are 
not prepared to make these sacrifices, and think you can win by the easy 
folly of arguing with England, you will become in a few generations 
a race without a home. Your island, which is full of glorious tradi- 
tions and memories of a brave and gallant ancestry, will be a grazing 
ground for British cattle and its nationality obliterated. The present 
drain will soon cripple you for any effectual physical resistance, for it is 
the men at home in the future, as it has been in the past, on whom 
Ireland must count for carrying on the policy of action. At present 
the greater portion of the people are lulled to sleep under the potent and 
destroying narcotic " moral agitation." Your leaders talk of a union 
between the British and Irish democracies ; if this can be accomplished, 
where comes in the doctrine of nationalities? Is not this the beginning 
of the millennium ? Why not include all the democracies of Europe — 
French, German, Russian, Turkish, and Italian — in this ollapodrida of 
peoples ? You say we have these in the United States ; but remember, 
friends, this is a great, free nation that is quickly swallowing up in the 
national life of the country her numerous immigrants, and leavening 
them into one united whole, with the distinctive and proud name of 
American. 

Here we have one national flag to protect us, and we are jealous as 
citizens of this national honor, and within a century will probably become 
as distinct a type of people from the various races who originally came 
here as they are from each other in Europe. In Europe there is no 
neutral ground to bring about this union of the democracies ; neither can 
there be a union of the aristocracies. National and conflicting interests 
forbid it, and these conflicting interests must necessarily be a barrier 
to any real union between the British and Irish peoples. The British 
workingman of Leeds, Bradford, Paisley, Hull, Birmingham, and Wolver- 
hampton, and the shipbuilders on the Clyde, would not wish to see any 
of their trade go to Cork, Dublin, Belfast, Kilkenny, Limerick, London- 
derry, or Galway, and the numerous Irish inland towns whose water 
power would make them desirable centres for manufacture. Another 
strange delusion is that of getting freedom by installments — an utter 
impossibility. Were you, like the British or other nations, a self-governing 
people, requiring reforms from your own Legislature, trying to remove 
class legislation, you could then appeal to your own people, and the ballot 
box and agitation would be the only proper engine to procure these ; from 
your own senate you could get extensions and benefits that, while it would 
not wholly remove the evils of which you complain, would in a measure 
remedy them. But remember that all these nations have the corner 
stone, the solid foundation of their liberties, in being a self-governed 
people. No foreign nation with directly antagonistic interests and hostile 
sentiment makes their laws or shapes their destiny ; and Ireland's 
interests are not class, but national ; it would be grave and serious injury 



444 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

to the foreign governing power to have the governed people develop 
their manufacturing capabilities. 

Britain aims to be the workshop of the world ; she spends millions of 
her plunder from the weaker races and the profits from her people's 
industries to try and break down the walls which other nations have put 
up against the free inflow of her wares. Is she at all likely by mere 
empty words to create a rival on her western seaboard ? and that 
most certainly Ireland would become under self-government. Will 
she lose the genius and services of a brilliant and inherently cultured 
people by an act of her own volition at the demand of mere empty words ? 
Irishmen, there are times when Nationalists feel astounded that you still 
entertain such insane views after the long roll of men whose teachings and 
whose melancholy deaths for principle ought to have made you think so 
differently. 

There is a wall of adamant between self-government and foreign 
government. There can be no compromise, no half measure, between them,, 
neither can there be between right and wrong. Your position must be either 
one or the other side of this wall. You say you are not looking for abso- 
lute independence, that you seek " Home Rule " as enjoyed by the Aus- 
tralian governments and the Dominion of Canada. This, Irishmen, is 
virtual independence in so far as it develops material prosperity, and to call 
these self-governing colonies dependencies or part of the British Empire is 
a pleasing fiction which will continue as long as Britain is willing to exe- 
cute and carry out in her diplomacy the only tie remaining — their wishes. 
It is a dream to think you can surmount or overthrow the barrier between 
you and freedom by mere force of words. At this date, 1887, you are 
working harmoniously with a section of the English democracy. The 
reason is very simple : they want their Heaven-sent leader, Mr. Gladstone, 
restored to power, and you have got the craze that he offered you Home 
Rule of some sort and expect to get this measure passed into law on his 
restoration. Had Mr. Gladstone offered you any measure by which you 
could control or govern yourselves people might consider you had some 
slight foundation upon which to rest your hope ; but the facts are directly 
opposite, and this measure, called " Home Rule," which has been offered, 
is one of the most gigantic frauds of the age : it cannot be expressed in 
milder language to really convey a slight sense of its falsehood. The 
moment that this bill would become law, or as soon as you could practi- 
cally realize what it really meant, you would find that Mr. Gladstone was 
cheating you with a sham ; you would certainly discover that if he ever 
comes to power — and it would not in the interests of his country be 
reasonable to expect him to act otherwise. Yourselves and the English 
democrats would then be as far apart as you were at the time of recent 
Irish history recorded in this chapter. 

Mr. O'Brien was not allowed to continue very long undisturbed by 
the liberty-loving Mr. Gladstone. He was brought before the courts 
for daring' to question British justice in Ireland. It was certainly very 
wicked of Mr. O'Brien to doubt the benevolent intentions of the "Grand 
Old Man," who knew much better than Irishmen what was good for them, 
as one year previous to this date he knew better than Mr. John Dillon 
what was passing in Mr. John Dillon's mind. He is truly a marvelous 
old man, and should be worshiped for his versatility of genius, as some 
of you are doing to your heart's content at present. 

Mr. O'Brien was brought before the courts and sent for trial, being 
allowed out on bail. Mr. Healy, Mr. Davitt, and Mr. Quinn were sent 
for a short time to enjoy the luxury of a plank bed, and the Crimes Act 
went as merry as a marriage bell. In the meantime Mr. O'Brien 
was enthusiastically returned as member of Parliament for his native 



THE APOSTLE OF VICTORY. 445 

town of Mallow in opposition to one of Mr. Gladstone's lambs. This 
was of course called a victory, and even by no less a person than Mr. 
Parnell called a great victory, while it was simply the people placing on 
record their demand for self-government, which demand both they and 
their newly elected member were powerless to enforce. Crown your new- 
made member, good people, with Iaure\_ ; he and his colleagues are 
certainly making a gallant fight in this war of words, and if talk could 
win they certainly deserve to do so. 

Mr. O'Brien was duly brought to trial, but an event occurred at this 
time which loomed over the editor's libel with such dread importance that 
it became of world-wide interest for the time. So completely was Mr. 
O'Brien's trial overshadowed in this new drama that the pious Liberal 
rulers forgot to pack a jury, and the result was a disagreement in finding 
a verdict. Mr. O'Brien received ten votes for acquittal and two for con- 
viction. But the times were hastening to further developments. The 
curtain is about to unroll itself and reveal another Irish catastrophe. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

(1883.) 

ARREST OF INVINCIBLES — BRITAIN'S STEALTHY WARFARE IN IRELAND — 
TRYING TO ENTRAP THE PRISONERS INTO BETRAYING THEIR COMRADES. 

Arrest of Dublin Invincibles — The Royal Marines — First Gleam of Light — Check for 
Check — Attack on Justice Lawson — Arrest of Patrick Delany — Attack on Juror 
Field — Another Proclamation Issued — The Star-Chamber Inquisition — Examination of 
Witnesses — Training Crown Witnesses Mallon and Curran — Inquisitors' Confusion — 
Head of Charles the First — Close of Act 1st — Plrst Examination in Court — Robert 
Farrel Yields — Second Examination — No Informers Yet — The Mental-rack Fails — 
Third Examination — Arrest of Fitzharris and Caffray — Fourth Examination — Mal- 
lon's Ingenuity — Mallon and Fitzharris — Kavanagh's Confidence Shaken — Mallon in 
Kavanagh's Cell — Kavanagh Falls — Mallon's Triumph — Bolton to the Front — Fifth 
Examination — Kavanagh as Crown Witness — Surprise of the Prisoners — Bolton, 
Curran, and Mallon — Not Yet Satisfied — Mrs. Carey Calls on Mallon — Carey's Torture 
— Mallon's False Statement of Curley — Carey Yields — Mallon's Victory — Sixth Exami- 
nation — Carey Still in the Dock — A Short Demand — Saturday, February 15 — 
Seventh Examination — British Trump Card — James Carey as an Informer — Conster- 
nation and Indignation in the Dock — Public Excitement — General Execration of 
Carey — Debate in the House of Commons — Forster's Attack on Parnell — The Greco 
Conspiracy — British Ministers Engaged in a Murder Conspiracy — Arrest in Paris — 
Seizure of Shells — English Gunpowder and Poniards — Attempt on the Life of the 
French Emperor — Mr. Joseph Mazzini — Greco's Letter sent under care of the British 
Minister — Mr. Forster Defends Mr. Mazzini — Letter from the Italian Patriot — Mr. 
Stansfield, British Cabinet Minister — Banker for Tebaldi's Murder Conspiracy of 1857 
— Mazzini Letters to Daniel Manin — Lessons to Irishmen — " Most Men Feel in their 
Hearts as I do" — " I Express it " — Captain O'Shea and Mr. Parnell — Surrender of 
Position as Irish Leader — Induced by Gladstone to Remain — Eight Examination in 
Kilmainham — Sent for Trial to Special Commission. 

On the night of Friday, January 12, 1883, and morning of Saturday, 
January 13, the British forces, or that portion of them comprised under 
the name of detectives, policemen, and marines, made a swoop on several 
houses in Dublin City, and in the small hours of that Saturday morning 
made prisoners of fifteen new victims. Many of these men were arrested 
in bed. It was evident that the British officials expected resistance, for 
they went armed and in sufficient numbers to overcome all opposition. 
The Irishmen arrested were not expecting these midnight visitors, and 
whatever arms they were possessed of were safely put away. The police 
procured no weapons, neither did they seize any documents ; probably 
there were none of these latter to seize. 

The British love of bringing in their naval forces at every imaginable 
contingency has been mentioned ; at this period of the British invasion of 
Ireland they were compelled to re-enforce their occupying army in Dublin 
City by sending a large contingent of marines to do police duty, or what 
the invaders so termed in Ireland, where the arresting and seeking for 
Irish Nationalists who are opposed to alien rule form the greater por- 
tion of these so-called police duties. For in spite of the great power of 
the invading army and police, Irishmen will continue to plot and to 
endeavor, if not to drive away, to at least make the enemy feel he occu- 
pies a hostile country. 

The writer remembers arriving in Dublin about this period, and when 
entering a cab to drive to the hotel he noticed a stalwart stranger take his 
seat beside the driver ; on arriving at the hotel he asked the cabman who 

446 



ARREST OF INVINCIBLES. 447 

his fellow occupant on the box-seat was, and he replied, in the humorous 
tones of a Dublin carman : " He is guarding you. He is one of the 
marines that the English, God bless them ! sent over to take care of us." 
The cabman shrugged his shoulders and went off with a broad grin upon 
his expressive face. The writer entered the hotel deeply grateful for the 
care taken by Her Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy. 

The men arrested in this midnight raid were James Carey, Thomas 
Martin, Joseph Hanlon, Peter Doyle, Joseph Brady, Timothy Kelly, 
Robert Farrell, John Dvvyer, Henry Rowles, Edward McCaffray, Daniel 
Delany, Joseph Mullet, James Mullet, Peter Carey, William Moroney, 
Daniel Curley. On the morning of January 14, 1883, they were arraigned 
before the sitting magistrate and without the slightest evidence offered, 
or any charge preferred against them, they were remanded for one week 
and committed to prison without bail. 

When James Carey was arrested as a "suspect" six months previous, 
John Fitzsimons, his lodger, discovered arms in the loft of the tenement 
house. The old man at first did not acquaint the British officials with 
the news, but secreted them in another part of the attic. He was evi- 
dently nervous and feared he was treading upon dangerous ground. He 
took no further action. 

Some days after this Mrs. Carey, accompanied by a man, as afterward 
stated in evidence, entered the loft. Fitzsimons, on the alert, watched 
them, and fearing that the concealed weapons might be removed, his 
cupidity overcame his fears and he rushed to the police office with the 
news of his discovery. He returned with the officials, who found the 
arms where Fitzsimons pointed out, Mrs. Carey and her escort having 
left the premises after apparently a fruitless search, if that was their 
mission. 

When the enemy discovered the peculiar class of arms seized, he felt 
satisfied he had got the first clew to the 6th of May " suppressions." and 
was convinced he had the actual weapons used. 

It might be reasonable to expect that a wealthy government could 
command agents of sufficient ability and judgment to keep secret what it 
considered an important clew in the discovery of the revolutionary organ- 
ization that had inaugurated a new species of warfare against them. But 
this was not so. This seizure had been scarcely effected, when from the 
supposed sealed doors of Scotland Yard it reached the ears of the Irish 
National Government. The British officials boasted in circles which they 
considered confidential of their fortunate capture. They said that they had 
discovered in the person of a respectable Dublin mechanic the leader of 
these terrible conspirators. It will be remembered by those who read the 
opening of these so-called trials that the British believed, or for some 
purpose wished the public to believe, that Carey was a leader among the 
Invincibles. 

The actions of the British agents in Irish political affairs have been one 
series of stupid blunders. 

They were now, they considered, in possession of a valuable clew, and 
having, as before mentioned, crowed about their victory, they set about 
trying to follow up the traces so opportunely placed in their hands. 

Having no specific indictment to bring against Carey, they felt com- 
pelled to release him in September, at the expiration of the " Suspects 
Act ; " it was, however, a convenient excuse to let him out and watch his 
movements. 

This they did, but no clew — not the faintest — was derived from this 
careful espionage. Time passed ; they began to despair of unraveling 
any further portion of this mystery, when another chapter of accidents 
dropped something into their arms unexpectedly ; then these astute and 



448 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

wise British agents, called " secret police," as if in sarcasm, got a more 
important clew still. 

It has been mentioned that Mr. Justice Lawson arbitrarily sent a 
British connection loving yet withal a leading Provincialist to prison, Mr. 
E. D. Gray, the High Sheriff of Dublin City. Judge Lawson's whole career 
was passed in the British service, and like a good many of his colleagues 
he confounded gentlemen such as Mr. Gray with those men who believed 
in the potency of using weapons of destruction to get rid of foreign usur- 
pation. Consequently Judge Lawson was bitterly disliked in all National 
and Provincial circles, probably more so in the latter, as the " Constitu- 
tionalists" concentrate all their energies in strong feeling. 

Mr. Gray, who was deservedly popular from a " Provincialist " stand- 
point, was one of the many agitators which Ireland is blessed with. This 
feeling of dislike to Lawson was intensified, and detestation of the Judge 
was the prevailing sentiment in all circles in Dublin. 

One Saturday night the citizens were surprised to hear that in spite of 
his guard a man had attempted to shoot the Judge in Nassau Street, near 
the Kildare Street Club House, but that he was overpowered and captured. 
The story told stated that the man was noticed by Lawson's guard — which 
consisted of three armed marines and four armed constables — to act in a 
strange manner ; twice crossing the street he was seen to approach the 
judge ; the last time he was stopped in the act of drawing a revolver and 
was captured. The name of this man was Patrick Delany. 

Judge Lawson left his home carefully guarded and walked down Mer- 
ion Square, then up Leinster Street and toward the Kildare Street Club ; 
the Judge was walking en route to his destination at Henrietta Street, to 
attend a dinner given by one of the so-called legal societies. Patrick 
Delany was evidently following the Judge for some purpose, and was 
suddenly seized with the impulse of shooting him. It is not believed that 
that was his original mission, and if as reported he was a member of any 
revolutionary movement, he must have violated his instructions. 

The Latin races have a large amount of mercurial and excitable 
characteristics, very noble in some cases, but when this feeling controls the 
judgment it frequently leads to disaster. Delany was influenced by ner- 
vous excitement ; he literally got intoxicated with recklessness ; he was no 
more master of his own actions than a man under the influence of alcohol. 
He ran up to the marines guarding the Judge and, clutching one of them 
by the arm, loudly whispered " It's all right." He then crossed to the 
College railings on the opposite side and as quickly re-crossed, repeating 
this movement twice, then suddenly appearing in the presence of the 
Judge he was overpowered by the guards and brought off a struggling 
captive on an outside car to jail. 

It would be difficult to tell whether Delany or the Judge's guards were 
the most stupid ; it was evident that Judge Lawson's life was very little 
guarded by his five armed protectors, and Delany, if he was sane, could 
easily have shot him at that time. Why they did not arrest this excitable 
madman on his first approaching them is incomprehensible, considering the 
special duty they were on. 

Delany's arrest was the pin-hole by which the British hoped to brighten 
their vision. No statement could be got from their new-made prisoner, but 
they knew they had him in their power, and were prepared to apply moral 
torture to wring some information from him. 

He was defended by lawyers who are a part of the machinery of 
foreign rule in Ireland — a monstrous inconsistency, which had been 
practiced by Irish revolutionary Nationalists for many generations. James 
Stephens has been the only Irish leader who did not stultify himself by 
anaking defense in a British dock. The Irish people are not properly 



ARREST OF INVINCIBLES. 449 

educated on this important principle ; they think they are deserted by 
their friends if not defended by lawyers. The British, as a matter of 
course, will either hang or imprison any enemy to her rule she can capture, 
and these mock trials have no bearing on the result. Irish patriots have 
no right to complain ; it is a death struggle, which means either death to 
the invaders or the invaded. 

Irish patriots know they face death or imprisonment in every move 
they make, but it is their duty in spite of these to strike the foe when and 
how they can; they must face the issue boldly; men must die sometimes 
and a nation which cannot command the sacrifice of her sons will always 
remain subject to foreign power. Ireland has plenty of brave, daring men 
to take every chance and face any danger to serve her, but their leaders 
are unfortunately weaklings, too fond of agitation; their cowardice and 
hesitation are strangling their unhappy country. 

Patrick Delany was found guilty and sentenced to ten years' penal 
servitude. Then commenced Delaney's ordeal. 

The British secret police all this time were busily gleaning what infor- 
mation they could as to Delany's associates and the men who em- 
ployed the lawyers who defended him. They carefully traced the ante- 
cedents of these men and their friends. In the midst of their espionage 
and care, guarding all their hirelings by an unusual display of armed 
force, Dublin was startled by an attack made on one of the twelve men 
whom Wm. O'Brien exposed for their infamous conduct, one of the brutal 
jurors of the murdered Francis Hynes. This man had a miraculous 
escape. With all their precautions and care, and armed as they consid- 
ered themselves in every possible way against the Irish enemy, here was 
another and nearly a fatal swoop made by their mysterious foes, and the 
men, whoever they were, that attacked the British juror, disappeared, leav- 
ing no traces of their whereabouts. 

Another proclamation was hurriedly issued ; the Dublin Castle rulers 
were alarmed. Spencer, who was carefully guarded by half a troop of 
cavalry, looked anxious and careworn as he rode through the streets of 
the hostile city. Did Spencer's guards preserve his life while he was 
enforcing his Crimes bill and enjoying his battues of hangings? From 
accidental and impulsive attack of some outraged native of the island, 
possibly yes. But not from any Irish organized assault. There were men 
in Dublin who would have attacked him in open day and even in defiance 
of his uniformed banditti have slain the tyrant. True, the greater num- 
ber of these patriots would have fallen in the assault. There are times 
in the history of nations when such sacrifices are not only a duty, but 
become imperative. Such was the condition of Ireland at that time. 

The Castle proclamation, in addition to the original rewards of 
^£10,000 and ^5000, supplemented these by a reward of ^1000 for 
the slightest useful hearsay evidence* But all in vain, for Irish Revolu- 
tionists are foremost in the history of mankind in their faith and loyalty to 
each other. In every revolutionary epoch in Europe or in any country, 
there were more erring and traitorous slaves to be found than can be 
traced in Ireland's history. The contrary false statement has been so 
circulated abroad by the infamous slanderous and treacherous foe, even 
some Irishmen believe this abominable lie. Perjurers British gold have 
manufactured, and for Britain's own vile ends, these men were dubbed 
informers or traitors ; but from the ranks of the patriots they have suc- 
ceeded in but very few instances. And in modern times all these of 
any notice have been executed in spite of British protection. 

Not one man, not even the poorest or humblest within the ranks of the 
Invincibles, ever for a moment felt dazzled by these enormous bribes ; 
other Irish movements have had one or two foul traitors in their ranks, 



45° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

but inside this heroic organization not one, not a single individual, would 
betray to the foe any important secret for the wealth of the British treasury. 

These rewards brought a plentiful crop of perjurers ; the police, tempted 
by the gold, especially the higher and more venal officials, aided in procur- 
ing these. This outside information the Castle people knew was fabrica- 
tions on the part of those who volunteered these statements. They turned 
these people over to George Bolton, their infamous crown solicitor, a use- 
ful instrument to manufacture any evidence necessary to murder an Irish- 
man by the mockery of a trial. 

They had Delany in their power and were determined to squeeze the 
very soul out of him by every species of mental torture, until they got 
him to admit that he knew certain men whom they suspected of being 
members of the hostile organization ; but beyond this Delany would not 
go at that time. 

Remembering the capture of arms in James Carey's house, and learn- 
ing who his friends were, coupled with Delany's admissions in prison, 
they commenced a number of haphazard arrests. These men were 
brought before John Curran, the presiding genius of this secret star- 
chamber, and subject to his legal scalping knife, they were examined by 
this suave Mephistopheles, the cruel counterpart, but lacking the ability 
of Goethe's creation. Strange to say, this man had been engaged to de- 
fend Mr. Parnell, Mr. Egan, and other traversers in a previous trial. What 
a satire in thus employing lawyers in a political trial where the enemy 
controls both attack and defense ! 

Among the principal star-chamber arrests were James Carey, James 
Mullet, Daniel Curley, Joseph Brady. Bolton's staff of perjurers were at 
hand to identify these men ; the Castle people were determined to convict 
some of them in any event. They were examined, and every ingenuity 
used to extract information, but all to no purpose. 

The British felt necessitated to make this plunge, for the Dublin and 
other Anti-Irish jurors in their interests were getting panic-stricken after 
the attack on juror Field. They were asking for protection in open 
court ; they felt the necessity for a coup d'e'tat or their mock constitutional 
machinery would be useless ; already the Invincibles or some body of 
men had put it sadly out of gear. 

One fact they had made up their minds about, that this mysterious 
conspiracy was purely of native growth. Their hackneyed cry of foreign 
elements and transatlantic origin was of no use here. The men sus- 
pected had never been out of Ireland. 

Before England's inquisitor, John Curran, these suspects were brought, 
to undergo the crucial ordeal of having their intellects put in competition 
with this trained master of fence in words, this able and subtle lawyer. 
Around them were displayed some of the forces of the enemy, ready to obey 
the slightest nod from their sauve chief Mallon, who, cat-like, watched 
every movement, now and again purring as he looked in the eyes of the 
black-browed inquisitor on the bench. 

There was a more important reason for the presence of these suspects 
than their mere examination. The British had made up their minds that 
these men were actively hostile to their usurpation in Ireland ; they did 
not expect to be able to wring from these patriots any important admis- 
sions or elicit any very startling information, but to carry out a new plan 
of manufacturing evidence, they were walked slowly up and down the hall 
leading to the pillory of examination previous to being brought before 
Mr. Curran. A perforated screen shut off a passage from the hall lead- 
ing to the chamber of mental torture ; behind this screen the detectives 
had stationed their false witnesses, these necessary and useful instru- 
ments of British revenge — a revenge which the enemy was determined in 



ARREST OF INVINCIBLES. 451 

all eventualities to wreak upon these captives. Rightly or wrongly — 
rightly according to British ethics if possible — the most prominent of these 
whom they strongly suspected, both from their antecedents and associa- 
tions, as Irish Nationalists, they decided should suffer the death penalty, 
and all the remaining men be sent to penal dungeons. They were thoroughly 
convinced that these men were enemies — practical enemies of British rule 
in Ireland. It was thus absolutely necessary that the witnesses should be 
able to identify the people against whom they were about to swear and of 
whom they knew absolutely nothing. Behind this screen stood the 
bribed upholders of the Majesty of British Law in Ireland, not informers, 
but perjurers. People who were tempted by the large rewards and having 
previously manufactured a story which did not deceive the Castle officials, 
but which was shaped to suit the purpose of these British employees. They 
were instructed by the 'infamous George Bolton, the Crown lawyer, in 
their evidence ; one man's story so arranged as to dove-tail into the other, 
and alas for human nature, one witness was a young girl little more than 
sixteen years old ! The reason of their presence there concealed was to 
make certain of the identity of the prisoners whom the detectives pointed 
out to them by name. These witnesses attended day after day, during the 
Castle examination of the suspects, learning their fearful lesson, and to 
make assurance doubly sure, that when upon the witness table there could 
be no possible mistake. It needed neither Kavanagh nor Carey's subse- 
quent information to hang these prisoners. That work would be as easily 
accomplished as the death of Hynes and Joyce on similar perjured testi- 
mony. It was necessary to train these perjurers well, for it will be remem- 
bered they had to swear to events which happened nearly twelve months 
previous, and identify men never before known to them. 

Any man in possession of the key to the revolutionary situation could 
readily understand from the questions put by Curran that the British 
were completely at sea. Dickens' gentleman who got the head of Charles 
the First into everything, had a counterpart in that black-whiskered, sallow- 
faced inquisitor, for a priest or one who passed as a priest got into every 
other question put by him. The young lady in Thackeray's novel who 
played "such a getting upstairs " never performed with greater amount of 
variations that classic piece, than did Mr. Curran try to get upstairs into 
the intellects of the prisoners before his seat of torture, but that wise and 
well-informed hireling of alien rule in Ireland, put questions easily 
answered. The pious reverence he was alluding to, the Head of Charles 
the First in his queries, had no more to do with the event about which he 
was trying to elucidate information than Thackeray's tune and its per- 
former. Inquisitor Curran was mixing up different and distinct under- 
takings, and with his pestle was pounding in the mortar the different 
ingredients to make an excellent " olla podrida," and instead of unravel- 
ing the threads of what he termed " a terrible conspiracy " he was confus- 
ing himself and puzzling those he questioned as to what he was really/ 
driving at. Oh, wise grand juries who bring in British verdicts so compla- 
cently, what Solons you are ! One thing he succeeded in doing with the 
men before him, who were determined to admit nothing : They actually 
went so far as to deny knowing one another. This might be called 
superfluous caution and bad judgment, but it must be recognized that 
they were under the influence of the subtlety and deep scheming of the 
inquisitor and the oiliness of his feline friend Mallon, who kept purring 
his sweet song of friendship and advice into their ears " to tell all," which 
was accompanied by the basso threats of the Inquisitor, " Answer this 
question, or I'll have you on the table." Varied with, "Answer, or I'll 
commit you," and then the feline song began again to purr its tale. Joseph 
Brady was detained in prison two nights, but from none of the men could 



45 2 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

any of their threats wring the smallest useful information. James Carey 
and Kavanagh the carman were as firm through this trying ordeal and 
in their lack of knowledge, and the inquisitor dismissed them. So ended 
the Castle torture scenes, Act i. 

The British gains were : further confirmation of their suspicions, or 
what suited the British Torquemada and his attendant Mallon just as well. 
These men refused to affirm the queries put to them — ergo they were 
guilty. These men were of course keeping some information back — ergo 
they were guilty. But the great and important gain was the fact that all 
the perjurers were now thoroughly familiar with their personal appearance, 
and could successfully go through the justice-loving form of picking them 
out from a row of other prisoners, and so George Bolton, afterward pub- 
licly charged with being a thief, and associated with the infamous Dublin 
scandals, commenced his manipulation of evidence before they made 
the arrests. So closed the year 1882, so sanguinary in the Irish war 
against the invader ; and the invader was about to inaugurate the New 
Year by some more sanguinary work. Already the victims were selected 
for the sacrifice, and the " Saviour of Ireland " Mr. Gladstone, in the 
pious rectitude of a Liberal career, presided over all these various move- 
ments and the destinies of the Empire so providentially committed to 
his care. The Dublin Freeman's " Achilles " was now bending his bow 
and sending Parthian shafts among his dear "fellow-countrymen " which 
he so kindly termed the Irish, so as to make them better and happier 
under his much-prized rule. 

These three officials of the enemy, Messrs. Bolton, Curran, and Mallon, 
had now completed their arrangements, and as mentioned in the opening 
of this chapter, at midnight they made these fifteen arrests, as they were 
unaware of what the ramifications of the Invincible movement were. They 
considered that hour the best to select to arrest men whom they knew, if 
in any way identified with the Phoenix Park tragedy, could not easily be 
captured if on the alert. 

From the number of men afterward released and not brought to trial, 
the enemy evidently made these arrests on very vague suspicion ; they 
succeeded after a short time in procuring a witness from the prisoners, 
but apparently a man who could scarcely be said to belong to the National 
ranks. He was, however, useful to them in a measure by his public appear- 
ance on the witness stand to corroborate the lies about informers they were 
pouring into the ears of the imprisoned men. The name of this witness was 
Robert Farrell. 

The second day's trial, Saturday, January 20, 1883, was Farrell's first 
appearance on the witness stand ; nothing of importance was elicited, 
another remand was asked for, and of course granted. Farrell's evidence 
gave the clew to the press that the British were on the right track. At first 
the newspapers were skeptical'of any results coming from the trials. But 
Ireland's foreign rulers had little real information ; so far the thumb-screw 
and rack of mental agony had weakened no man ; their work was so far 
undone. 

They now commenced a system of moving the prisoners about in 
special squads, and with subtle cunning, tried to impress on the minds of 
one batch what information they had procured from the others. Mallon 
purred away among them with his claws carefully concealed, suppressing 
his rage with great care ; but the softer he purred the more was he on the 
alert to capture a witness from among the men. 

The third day's examination, Saturday, January 27, 1883, came, and still 
no informers. Were ever torturers more to be pitied ? — for during these two 
weeks the prisoners were suffering a thousand deaths in the artificial 
terrors and agonies which intellect when devilishly applied can harrass 



ARREST OF INVINCIBLES. 453 

those in their power. At this third examination the enemy demanded 
from their satrap on the bench a longer remand ; the men felt they were 
standing the ordeal well and wished their fate decided ; the inuendoes and 
slanders on their character were told to them by their visiting relatives. 

In the meantime the detectives were on the lookout for every man 
they suspected, and succeeded in capturing two additional prisoners, 
Thomas Caffray and John Fitzharris, the latter kuown by the sobriquet 
of "Skin the goat." 

It has often been a puzzle, reading of these events, that these two men 
last arrested were not assisted in leaving the country ; they had ample time 
to have crossed the Atlantic from the time of the first arrests ; it was 
deplorable neglect, to say the least of it, somewhere. 

The fourth day's preliminary trial came, Monday, February 5, and 
no fresh evidence ; another remand was asked for and granted. The arrest 
of Fitzharris enabled Mallon to put a ruse into practice to try and procure 
another witness. He knew that there was a personal difference between 
the cardrivers, Cavanagh and Fitzharris, a matter of long standing dispute. 
One morning they were both brought from their cells and taken to the 
prison courtyard. Kavanagh's outside car was there and Mallon told 
him to get upon the box and drive around the yard to see if Alice Carroll 
would recognize his seat on the box. This girl having sworn she followed 
the car on the night of the attack on juror Field — A piece of concocted and 
■willful perjury. Her story is false from first to last. During the time 
Kavanagh was driving round, Mallon engaged Fitzharris in conversation. 
Mallon purposely assumed an air of great mystery and earnestness while 
talking and listening to Fitzharris' replies, the subject they were discussing 
having no reference to politics. Mallon's unusual solemn manner was 
noticed by Kavanagh, and he feared Fitzharris was giving information ; a 
scowl of wrath was visible on his face ; Mallon thought the poison was 
working. He ordered Kavanagh down and told Fitzharris to take his 
seat upon the car and drive round. With a look of triumph on his face, 
Mallon commenced making notes of the imaginary information, furtively 
watching the effect on Kavanagh, whom he did not speak to. After a few 
turns he called Fitzharris to him, and seizing him confidentially by the 
collar he whispered in low tones some pleasantries. Fitzharris suspected 
this display of friendship was to induce him to give information. 
But Mallon entertained no such idea ; he knew torture would not 
wring any knowledge from Fitzharris. He used Fitzharris as a trap 
to weaken Kavanagh, and induce him to become a Crown witness. 
He dismissed both men, and after the lapse of about an hour he entered 
Kavanagh's cell and commenced a friendly conversation with him, 
telling him that all the men had volunteered to become approvers 
for the Crown to save their lives, and that " Skin the goat " that 
morning had made a clean breast of it. Kavanagh had been told a portion 
of this story before, but always received it with sullen silence. He was 
'enraged with Fitzharris, and having witnessed the cleverly arranged 
maneuvers of Mallon that morning, believed that he was telling the truth. 
He replied in angry tones that he would get even with Fitzharris, and 
volunteered to give evidence. At first Mallon appeared to hesitate ; he 
had so much evidence already (the usual stereotyped British lie), but 
afterward accepting, Kavanagh was brought before the master spirit that 
guided the perjurers, George Bolton, and, Kavanagh forgetting in his 
temper, the horror, infamy, treason, and certain fate of the dreaded 
"'informer," had his information taken down and arranged by Bolton for 
Saturday's trial. 

On Saturday, February 10, the fifth preliminary examination took 
place. The British were confident they had a trump card in the car- 



454 THE IRISH NATIONAL INV1NCIBLES. 

driver, and were certain the fortress of concealed information was tottering 
under their blows. When Myles Kavanagh was called to the witness 
table, there was great astonishment perceptibly visible in the faces of the 
men in the dock ; more especially was this noticeable in the nervous action 
of James Carey, who had hitherto displayed an air of aggressive bravado, 
kid-gloved and smoking cigars to and from the court house to the prison. 
But when Kavanagh's evidence was analyzed it did not appear to throw 
very much additional light on the situation. He was not aware, accord- 
ing to his statements, for what purpose he was used by the orders of those 
who controlled his movements ; he was an Irish Revolutionist, who obeyed 
his orders unquestioned. His drive from the Park on that 6th of May 
evening was the sensation piece-de- resistance of his evidence. The Crown 
asked for a short remand until Thursday, February 15. 

After the evidence of Kavanagh, the British felt the necessity of getting 
either Carey, Curley, or James Mullet as witnesses. They considered that 
these men could give them some clew to the intricate labyrinth which per- 
plexed them. Having these men completely in their power, they spread 
broadcast on the wings of calumny the statement that all three were only 
too eager to purchase safety by laying bare the secrets of their hearts to 
the British officials. This scandal was so cleverly concocted that the 
families of all these men believed the story true of the others. A writer 
observes, alluding to someone who professed to despise this hideous 
monster, " Calumny, sir ! You do not know what you disdain. I have 
seen the worthiest of men all but ruined by it. Believe me, there is no 
wickedness, however ignoble, no horror, no story, however absurd, that 
you may not make the idlers of a great city believe if you set yourself to 
it. And we have people here so clever at the work. First a low rumor 
sweeping the ground like a swallow before the storm. . ." 

This calumny has eaten away the characters of most reputable men in 
the National ranks ere now ; how much more easy could it work its vile 
ends to steal away the good name and honor of these imprisoned men ! 
Those who knew him would as soon believe that Robert Emmet offered 
to turn informer as Daniel Curley. He was one of God's noblest crea- 
tions, had always been a true, honest, and fearless Nationalist. Mr. James 
Mullet, who was of an impulsive nature, a man who often acted without 
thought, and might possibly under such impetuous feelings commit acts 
of indiscretion, but treason never ; he was a true and manly Irish 
Nationalist and the very soul of honor. It was a foul lie to try and 
blacken this brave Irishman's name with this false and unsupported charge. 
It is possible that Carey, who was weakening, believed this story of the 
other two men, but they did not think so of him. What some people in 
Dublin feared, came true ; Carey's wife was the first to move. She went 
to Mallon, as she expressed it, to save her husband, and being in posses- 
sion of any information known to him, satisfied Mallon that he would 
have a trump card in placing Carey on the witness table. Kavanagh's 
appearance as a witness helped to corroborate Mallon's statement that 
he was keeping back other important testimony, and urged on by the 
appeals of his wife, Carey finally succumbed. At first he was indignant 
at his wife's statements, for along with his lifetime's detestation of an in- 
former, he dreaded the doom that would always remain suspended 
over him as chief traitor to his comrades ; but the belief implanted in his 
weak mind that it was a race between him and Curley decided the issue, 
for this foul lie was purred out with proper emphasis by the feline Mallon. 
So Carey fell, and the machinery of British rule in Ireland dreamt they 
had found a savior. 

The man was now sold over to his wretched destiny. He who had 
before him the previous day a patriot's death, was now steeped in the 



ARREST OF INVINCIBLES. 455 

slime of poisonous treachery, and his name stained for all generations, not 
only of Irishmen, but all patriotic liberty-loving mankind. By one fell 
stroke he had precipitated himself from virtue to infamy. The British 
■enemy tried to get information he did not possess, and some of which was 
not true, but merely the offspring of their own suspicions. Every kind 
of gossip which ever came to Carey's ears they tried to distort into evi- 
dence. Mr. Frank Byrne, the Land League secretary, Carey never saw in 
his life. These two men had never met, and yet this gentleman was in- 
cluded in his list of suspected persons. It may be said of Carey in the 
lines of Seneca, " Courage leads to heaven, fear to death." He was dead 
to every feeling which hitherto animated him ; every shred of news he could 
give to the treasury solicitor, Mr. Bolton (whose own infamous career 
was exposed later on), he did, and Bolton put them together. His Phoenix 
Park story was a miserable picture ; Carey was ordered away before a 
blow was struck. He was a coward and so fell, and with the aid of his 
more contemptible confrere George Bolton, the two worthies tried to 
save British rule in Ireland from those men spoken of by the poet, 
•General George Halpine of New York : 

Honor the brave who battle still 

For Irish rights in English lands ; 
No power except their native will, 

No strength except their naked hands „ 
Who fight by day and fight by night, 

In groups of two or three or ten, 
The savage unrelenting fight 

Against two hundred thousand men. 

The jails were yawning through the land, 

The scaffolds fatal click is heard. 
But still moves on the scanty band 

By jail and scaffold undeterred. 
A moment's pause to wail the last 

Who fell in freedom's fight, and then 
With teeth set firm and breathing fast 

They face two hundred thousand men. 

You call them ignorant, rash, and wild ; 

But who can tell how patriots feel 
With centuries of torment piled 

Above the land to which they kneel ? 
And who has made them what we find, 

Like tigers lurking in their den, 
And breaking forth with fury blind 

To beard two hundred thousand men ? 

Who made their lives so hard to bear 

They care not how their lives are lost ? 
Their land a symbol of despair — 

A wreck in ruin's ocean tossed ? 
We, happier here, may carp and sneer 

And judge them harshly — but what then ? 
No gloves for those who have as foes 

To face two hundred thousand men. 

Of the officers or executive of the Invincible movement neither Carey 
nor any other Crown witness could offer the faintest conjecture. And 
when the Privy Council read the information of their leading witness, 
Dublin Castle was very much dissatisfied at Carey's limited knowledge. 
Speculation of the wildest and most reckless kind took the place of 
absolute information ; no man whom they suspected of hostility to their 
rule was safe from attack and possible arrest as an Invincible. 

The one advantage of Carey's evidence was the seeming truthfulness 



45 6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

with which they could now invest the coming trials, by putting so impor- 
tant a witness as a man they called a leader on the witness table. Yet after 
all in a conquered country this did not so much matter ; their perjurers 
could easily satisfy the partisan and prejudiced juries selected from their 
own ranks to bring in suitable verdicts. 

But they hoped — and strained every energy to accomplish it — to spread 
demoralization through the Irish revolutionary ranks and among the 
masses of the Nationalists ; the amount of information of the most secret 
and important nature as to Irish projects they were possessed of they 
particularly wished the people to believe, and they impressed through the 
press and other channels upon the Irish masses the fact that Carey was 
the head of the Dublin organization, that he organized the movement to 
betray it. Several of the Provincialists played into their hands, by ring- 
ing the changes on this absurd statement. There may have been a little 
panic in the ranks of the Provincialists who had changed front by embrac- 
ing doctrines more extreme than those hitherto adopted by the party of 
action ; there were a few of those revolutionary neophytes. But the men 
who are to be counted on when active work against England is made pos- 
sible, looked upon these bogus terrors with indifference. "Constant 
exposure to dangers will breed a contempt for them," so that the feline 
Mallon and others of his species will have more purring to do before they 
succeed in planting such feelings in Nationalist Irish circles as they would 
wish to see there. 

The morning of Thursday, February 15, 1883, the sixth day of the 
preliminary examination before the police magistrates, saw no change in 
the previous hearings. Carey, who had committed treason the day before, 
stood for the last time in the dock beside the men whom he had already 
betrayed. Near by him was his young friend Joseph Brady, who greeted 
him with the usual friendship. Carey's youngest child, a few months old, 
had for sponsor Joseph Brady, for whom James Carey had always pro- 
fessed great personal friendship — the God-father of his young babe, against 
whom Carey was as merciless as against Daniel Curley, whom he believed 
had premeditated the same treachery as he himself had already practiced. 
Truly saith Caesar, " In extreme danger, fear feels no pity." How degraded 
had Carey become through that wretched vice of cowardice ! And yet 
his defection was not the cause of his companions' death, as some of the 
people think. Their deaths were certain, even if Carey or Kavanagh had 
not mounted the witness table or given to the enemy the slightest infor- 
mation. 

British suspicions, as already stated, and the evidence of their trained 
perjurers, would have enabled them to go through the form of trial suc- 
cessfully ; it would only have necessitated a little more hard swearing • 
on the part of their witnesses, which made little difference to those well 
paid satellites of British law in Ireland. But Carey's defection gave the 
British Government the opportunity of posing as the great moral reformer, 
and the more indignant the Irish people grew, lavish in their condemna- 
tion of Carey's infamy, the more they were playing the British game of 
showing to the world how horrified the good citizens of Dublin were at 
these wicked opponents of British rule in Ireland. 

And Mr. Torquemada Curran stroked his beard in his inquisitorial 
chair in the Castle and began to dream of a judgeship in the near future. 
And the detective chief Mallon licked his lips with satisfaction, and 
purred his song of pleasure at the result of his labors ; promotion and gold 
were hanging suspended before his pleased vision, soon to be all his own. 
And Treasury Solicitor Bolton, who was preparing the legal machinery, the 
forms by which Britain sends to the scaffold and the dungeon her Irish 
enemies, also saw before him a rich harvest of gold to spend with his 



ARREST OF INVINCIBLES. 457 

infamous associates in their unspeakable orgies. The presiding genie of 
Downing Street, Mr. Gladstone, was pleased at his agents' work, and money 
was supplied unstintingly from the British treasury. 

Saturday, February 17, 1883, in the Court House, Kilmainham, the 
British Government in Ireland launched its great thunderbolt — James 
Carey, as a public informer ! and to be certain to impress upon the world the 
importance of their new witness, they were particular in giving his social 
status as Town Councilor to the press. Dublin City was astounded, all 
Ireland was horrified, and British journals rang the changes on Irish 
treachery and duplicity, and the good pious Irish newspapers which are 
always inveighing against English misgovernment read their countrymen 
a moral lesson on the evils of secret societies, and of the great benefits of 
peaceful and legal agitation. 

It is unknown in the history of peoples, there never has been a nation 
so poisoned by slavery that any appreciable number of her people could 
hold such extraordinary views as do a very large number of respectable 
and in other respects well-educated Irishmen. Upon this question of the 
solution of their country's ills they entertain opinions which appear a 
direct outrage to common sense. They will seriously tell one another that 
all these revolutionary movements, if not in the pay of the enemy, are really 
working in the interests of the invader, and give the British an excuse for 
further tyranny and coercion. 

This monstrous assertion has been put forth from the press, the 
pulpit, and the public rostrum by men who profess to be lovers of 
their country, completely ignoring the actual condition of things, that 
Ireland is being crushed to death by the peaceful and ordinary process of 
British rule. What effect has it, or can it have on the life of a nation to see 
six, ten, twenty, or even one hundred men die on the scaffold, in material 
loss, compared to the thousands who are starved to death and compelled 
to emigrate from the island. While these men are preaching their silly 
platitudes the ordinary course of alien rule is drawing away the nation's 
life blood. And as to excuse, Britain needs no excuse ; it is absolutely 
necessary that she crush out Irish National sentiment and keep depopula- 
ting the country, fearing that some epoch might arise when Irish hostility 
would be Britain's destruction. 

Very recently a good Irish-American who had returned from a visit to 
Ireland, told the writer that he has become an unbeliever in physical 
force, seeing the wretched condition of Ireland and how powerless the 
people are under the hands of their armed taskmaster. Not powerless, 
fellow-countrymen, but cowardly and degraded, steeped in the poison of 
moral agitation and dying in thousands under its baleful and pernicious 
influence. What could resistance to their oppressor bring to them ? 
Death ! That is the limit of punishment which their enemy can inflict, 
and that penalty he is now exacting tenfold in the added horrors of his 
accursed system. 

In the British Commons about the time of these Invincible arrests, a 
debate took place, which gave Mr. Gladstone's former Irish taskrhaster, 
Mr. Forster, an opportunity to make a violent attack upon Mr. Parnell and 
to accuse that peace-loving Irish leader of being the principal cause of 
crime and outrage in Ireland. Mr. Forster's attack was a very violent 
one, and he marshaled all the facts which his position as Chief Secretary 
enabled him to furnish. These acts in the agricultural districts which 
Mr. Forster spoke of were the outcome of British misrule and plunder, 
and were more naturally the outcome of moral agitation than physical 
resistance to alien rule. In the footsteps of a peaceable agitation these 
retaliations for injuries always take place ; they are in no sense any oppo- 
sition to the cause which fosters these injuries, and are in fact more an 



45 S THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

injury than a service to that cause, for although the people are advised to 
peacefully follow a certain course and they will be sure to win, they 
cannot resist the temptation of enforcing this programme by physical 
attack upon those of their neighbors who resist its mandates by taking 
evicted farms and other acts of mercenary selfishness, which draw down 
retaliation, and so the national hatred of tyranny is wasted warring upon 
each other for the benefit of the common enemy, which is not the land- 
lord nor the policeman, but the diabolic master of both these scourges — 
foreign rule. 

Mr. Forster and other Englishmen are only too eager to take up the 
position of hurling upon the agitators this unfortunate fact, that while they 
were unsparing in their denunciation of the Park tragedy — the one great 
hostile act against Britain during that sanguinary regime — they appeared not 
to notice these country crimes. And it must be said most emphatically 
that they or theirs never held up their hands to denounce with anything 
like the same vehemence the slaughter of Ellen McDonagh, Mary Deane, 
or the boy Melody, as they did that Park tragedy. There was no procla- 
mation for these murders, showing the inconsistency of men who have 
been and are still deluding the Irish masses into the belief that they are 
gaining concessions for them. 

Mr. Forster and other Englishmen who try to pose as moralists and 
lovers of liberty and haters of crime, are like all English tyrants, not only 
inconsistent, but in dealing with Ireland, appear as the monstrous and 
hypocritical opponents of what they profess to advocate in other countries. 
The Invincible trials gave this Englishman what he considered a high 
moral standpoint upon which to denounce Mr. Parnell. 

Nineteen years before this denunciatory speech of Mr. Forster there 
occurred in the City of Paris four arrests for what was termed the " Greco 
conspiracy," which was a plot against the life of the then Emperor of the 
French, Napoleon III. On the 7th of January, 1864, the French police 
arrested four Italians in their lodgings in Paris ; they were said to have 
recently come from England — Greco, Tambuco, Imperator, and another. 
The police seized a quantity of English gunpowder, four poniards, four 
revolvers, four air guns of a new and ingenious construction, phosphorus, 
percussion caps, fuses several meters in length, and eight hand grenades 
made on the Orsini pattern. In the pockets of one of the men were found 
compromising letters. 

The French Procureur General stated at the trial that in the event of 
Greco, who was their leader, requiring money, he was to write to Mr. 
Flower, 35 Thurlow Square, Brompton, London. This matter was brought 
before the House of Commons by the then member for Finsbury, Mr. 
Cox, who stated that the gentleman mentioned by the Procureur General 
for the Empire at whose London House the Conspirator Greco was to 
write was no less a person than the Rt. Hon. Mr. Stansfield, then a 
member of the British Liberal Cabinet, and that the Mr. Flower men- 
tioned by the French public prosecutor was Mr. Joseph Mazzini. The 
British Minister neither admitted nor denied that Mr. Flower and Mr. 
Mazzini were one and the same person ; but refused to believe Mr. Maz- 
zini's complicity with the Greco conspiracy. Mr. W. E. Forster spoke in 
the highest terms of the Italian patriot Mr. Joseph Mazzini. Further, the 
British Minister, Mr. Stansfield, did not deny what was said against him 
by an English member when accused in the House of Commons of being 
the banker for the Tebaldi conspiracy of 1857 against the Emperor Napo- 
leon s life. These facts are not written in the slightest sense of reproach 
against the memory of the great Italian patriot, or any other nationalists 
who have felt compelled to aid the freedom of their land by resorting to 
extreme measures, but to show up the hollow mockery and hypocrisy of 



ARREST OF INVINCIBLES. 459 

these British rulers of Ireland, when it is found that a British Minister is 
the banker of a conspiracy whose avowed object was the death of the 
French Emperor. 

Mr. Joseph Mazzini, who was then staying with the British Minister 
Mr. Stansfield, wrote a letter denying his association with the Greco con- 
spiracy, but unlike the Irish leader's denial, he did not denounce his 
fellow-countrymen nor the proposed assault on Napoleon. He speaks of 
Greco in his letter thus : 

" Greco I know. Hundreds, I might say thousands, of young men 
belonging to our party of action are known to me. Greco is an enthusi- 
astic patriot, who took an active part in the enterprises of i860 and 1861 
in the south of Italy ; and he has had, as such, contact with me. Any 
note of mine in his possession, if there be any, must, however, belong to at 
least nine or ten months ago. 

" Enough in reply to accusations hitherto merely grounded on French 
police reports. I remain, 

"Yours faithfully, 

" Joseph Mazzini. 
" January 14, 1864." 

Most of the European revolutionists found a home in England, and 
not knowing enough of that hypocritical nation's rule in other countries, 
looked upon Britain as a most liberty-loving nation. M. Blanc, who was 
a great favorite in English society, one of France's illustrious sons, in his 
*' Histoire des Dix Ans," thus speaks of the Italian patriot Mazzini and of 
his revolutionary organization : 

" Differing from Carbonarism, which had been skeptical and liberal, 
'Young Italy' was profoundly religious and democratic. Its founder 
and chief was M. Mazzini ; and it had for its object the independence and 
unity of Italy ; for symbol a branch of cypress ; for device ora e sempre ; 
and for means, insurrection and propagandism, the sword of the conspirator 
and the pen of the journalist." 

These were the principles British statesmen endorsed in European 
lands. But the unity and independence of Ireland, a nation as old as the 
Italian, was and is in their eyes high treason. They who did not object to 
the Austrian empire being dismembered by the independence of Italy, 
express very different sentiments when the old Gaelic nation of Ireland 
is mentioned, but with the hypocrisy of all tyrants try to make a com- 
parison between Ireland and the Southern States of America, and call 
Ireland's demand for independence secession ; they even try to breed seces- 
sion in the Northern province Ulster, by endeavoring to excite religious 
animosity there. Like the Italian people and the Austrian, the Irish are 
a distinct race from the British and will never live peacefully beneath the 
same flag. 

Joseph Mazzini's letters to Daniel Manin, the president of the Vene- 
tian republic of 1848, should be pondered upon and thought over by Irish- 
men, particularly when they recollect that English statesmen have 
endorsed these views for Italy and Italian independence. Mazzini com- 
plains of his fellow-countrymen chiming in with the cant of the despots 
who ruthlessly shed blood for their own purposes — preservation of power : 

" And as if to substantiate beforehand such an accusation and allow 
others to suppose that a powerful secret organization for murder exists — 
you speak repeatedly of the courage needed to write your letter. Courage ! 
You well know that by declaiming against the dagger you will obtain, 
without the smallest shadow of risk, the name of the most moral among 



460 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

all the leaders of Italy from all those who, secure beneath the shelter of 
their national flag, secure in the exercise of their right, secure in a well- 
organized national justice, coldly judge the irregular and convulsive 
efforts of an uneducated and oppressed people, who have no hope left 
save in a bloody struggle, and no tribunal to establish the balance of 
justice between them and those who tyrannize over them. 

" If your oppressors have disarmed you, create arms to combat them ; 
make weapons of the iron of your crosses, the nails of your workshops, 
the stones of your streets ; the dagger you can shape from your workmen's 
files. Snatch by artifice and by surprise those arms by which the foreigner 
takes from you your honor, your property, your rights, and your life. 
From the dagger of the Vespers, to the stone of Ballila, and the knife of 
Palafox, blessed be in your hands every weapon that can destroy the 
enemy and set*you free. This language is mine, and it should be yours. 
The weapon that slew Mincovjtti in your arsenal initiated that insurrec- 
tion of which you accepted the direction in Venice. It was a weapon of 
irregular warfare, like that with which three months before the Republic 
destroyed the minister Rossi in Rome. 

" In the culpable indifference of governmental Europe to an idea of 
country, and an immense aspiration nourished by a people, and forcibly 
restrained for more than half a century — in this state of things is the true 
source of the theory of the dagger. 

" All European governments, by forbidding Italy to become a nation, 
are responsible before God and man for the daggers that glitter amid the 
darkness in our land. 

" To the men who are suffering under the knife of the executioner, 
' Use not the knife in your turn,' is the same thing as to say to a man 
dying in an atmosphere of pestilence, 'Let your blood flow calmly 
through your veins — cure yourself.' It is a similar error to that of the 
worthy men who would refrain from initiating republican institutions 
until those born and educated under a monarchical despotism have 
acquired the virtue of republicans. 

" The dagger will disappear whenever Italy shall have a life of her 
own, her rights recognized and justice done to her. 

" I abhor the shedding of a single drop of blood when not absolirfely neces- 
sary to the triumph or consecration of a holy principle. There are excep- 
tional moments in the life and history of nations not to be judged by the 
normal rule of human justice, and in which the actors can only receive inspira- 
tion from their conscience and from God. 

" Whenever justice is extinct and a single tyrant cancels through 
terror, and denies the conscience of a people and the God who willed them 
free — if a man, pure from hatred and every baser passion arises, in the 
religion of country and in the name of the eternal right incarnate in him, 
and says to him : 

" Thou torturest millions of my brothers ; thou withholdest from them 
that which God has decreed them ; thou destroyest their bodies and cor- 
ruptest their souls ; through thee my country dies a lingering death ; 
thou art the keystone of an entire edifice of slavery, dishonor, and wrong, 
I overthrow that edifice by destroying thee, I recognize in that mani- 
festation of tremendous equality between the tyrant of millions and a 



ARREST OF INVINCIBLES. 4^1 

single individual the finger of God. Most men feel in their hearts as I do. 
I express it." 

The Irish Nationalists have adopted these sentiments as being as 
applicable to Ireland now as to Italy then. 

The attack made upon Mr. •Parnell was replied to by the Irish leader 
in a very able and argumentative answer to the ex-British Minister which, 
so far as Ireland was concerned, left the issue in the same position. Cap- 
tain O'Shea came to the rescue of Mr. Parnell in the following letter, the 
concluding portion of which is quoted : 

" The House of Commons and the public know Mr. Parnell only as the 
man of hard, cold, undemonstrative bearing. I have seen him with the 
mask off. When the news of the murders in the Phoenix Park reached 
London, he came to me, and if ever a public man was overcome by horror 
and grief for a public crime, it was he. He then and there drew up an 
address announcing in a few words his retirement from public life. I 
myself approved of this course under the circumstances, but I insisted on 
an hour's delay in order that / might consult wiser heads than ??ii?ie. In 
deference to their counsels I eventually prevailed upon him with the 
greatest difficulty to alter his determination. 

" Your obedient servant, 

" W. H. O'Shea." 

An Irish Nationalist who remembers the hopes and aspirations which 
the enthusiastic Irish race tried to place around the young Tribune a few 
years ago, must feel saddened at the miserable weakness here displayed. 
Those who remember this gentleman who bears the outward appear- 
ance and name of Charles Stewart Parnell and remembers the original 
who in his Wexford speech styled Mr. Gladstone " The greatest coer- 
cionist," " The most unrivaled slanderer," and the "Pretended champion 
of liberties," must be horrified at this contemptible cowardice. Here is 
found his changling representative surrendering or offering to surrender 
his position as leader of the Irish movement into the hands of Ireland's 
enemy ; as he himself styled him, " The greatest coercionist and most 
unrivaled slanderer," Mr. Gladstone ; for no less a person is the "wiser 
head" here spoken of by the West British Captain O'Shea. Mr. Glad- 
stone himself informed the public of having received a letter from Mr. 
Parnell offering to resign his position as Irish leader to the English 
Premier. Mr. Gladstone corroborated Captain O'Shea as to the attitude 
of the Irish leader at this epoch ; he made the announcement when the 
London Times attacked Mr. Parnell that it was owing to Mr. Gladstone's 
advice and in " deference to his counsels " he resumed the Irish leadership. 

This astounding piece of information was unknown to the Nationalists,, 
and until Mr. Parnell made the public statement in the House of Com- 
mons, slandering the memory of dead patriots by the bitter and infamous 
appellation of assassin, there was a lingering hope in some breasts he 
would return to the cause. 

The Mr. Parnell whom Irish Nationalists hoped to see as their leader 
spoke the following words in the course of a speech- delivered in the 
United States during his mission of mercy : " It is impossible to suppose 
that a great cause can be won without shedding blood." There is not 
recorded in history anything like the treachery and slander by which the 
Nationalists have been treated by the Provincialists. This action on 
their part was the offspring of pure cowardice, not of malice, but the 
result to Ireland and the movement has been the same. But to continue 
this subject of Mr. Parnell's treason to Ireland after the Phoenix Park 
tragedy by anticipating dates: 



462 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Mr. Gladstone, in a speech delivered at a dinner given by labor mem- 
bers of Parliament on Tuesday, April 26, 1887, declared his disbelief in 
the accusations made by the London Times. Mr. Gladstone said that in 
May, 1882, immediately after the Phoenix Park deaths, Mr. Parnell wrote 
him a letter with reference to that crime. The contents of the letter, 
which had obviously been written under great mental distress, threw con- 
siderable light upon the topic of the present hour and were strong evi- 
dence in favor of the contention that the Times' letter was a base and 
malicious forgery. Mr. Parnell, apparently seeing that in the public mind 
he would be associated with the crime, offered to place himself without 
reserve in Mr. Gladstone's hands. He wrote that he regarded the murders 
with the utmost abhorrence, and he offered to resign the leadership of the 
Irish party, and retire altogether from political life if Mr. Gladstone con- 
sidered such a step advisable in the interests of Ireland. Mr. Gladstone 
said he would refrain from saying what reply he made, adding that it was 
only a short time since he obtained Mr. Parnell's assent to his mentioning 
this matter. 

Comment upon- this cowardly surrender of Irish leadership to the 
enemy's chief should be superfluous. Unfortunately for Ireland, there 
will be men found still to cling to their early fetish and his sham move- 
ment. The British enemy, both Tory and Radical, are in full possession 
of all the facts connected with the recent Invincible movement, and 
were completely astounded at the stupid blundering of the London Times, 
who in its mad and blind hatred of everything Irish, played a most injurious 
part for British interests in its recent so-called expose', and has made itself 
the instrument of some malicious fools, acting no doubt without a single 
shred of genuine information. It is the British enemy's vital interest that 
every Irish hostile movement directed against its rule in Ireland should 
be made as insignificant and as unrepresentative as possible, consequently 
it is most important that for the ends of British diplomacy Mr. Parnell 
and the Provincial movement should be successful in rebutting the Times' 
statements. Few would think that the Mr. Parnell of a few years back could 
prove such a moral coward as Mr. Gladstone's speech makes him in the 
eyes of Irish patriots.* The genuine Charles Stewart Parnell said in 
Wexford: "Perhaps the day may come when I may get a good word from 
Englishmen as being a moderate man when I'm dead and buried." 

Charles Stewart Parnell pronounced his funeral requiem at Wexford. 
Better had he accepted the invitation of the gallant Wexfordmen when 

* Since this was written the Parnell Commission has been holding court in London. 
The enemy's assassin organ, the Times, is not making any inquiries into the Invincible 
movement, but is assisting the Tories to try to degrade the Irish cause before the world. 
The interest of both British parties is to slander Irish patriots before mankind. The 
unfortunate victims of Britain's demoniac presence in Ireland are brought to London for 
exhibition, and all the evils attending on foreign misrule which are deliberately the crea- 
tion of that diabolic institution, are paraded before the world. The Irish social land war, 
which is the direct effect of Britain's destruction of Irish industries, and her brutal system 
■of impoverishing the people, are exhibited in the persons of these unfortunate beings that 
the enemy has used every engine to degrade and make savage. The London illustrated 
papers contain pictures of these poor people, and every species of wickedness in the shape 
of testimony they are bringing before the world as the doings of Irish patriots. These 
persecuted people's actions had no more to do with the Invincible organization, which 
had for ultimate object Irish independence, than the melodramatic scene in court introduc- 
ing Lady Mountmorris as a witness had to do with agrarian outrages. Lord Mount- 
morris' death had no relation whatever to the Land League or to any political question. But 
the infamous object of this exhibition is to try and degrade the Irish cause before the 
world, and especially in the United States. But Americans remember that the country- 
men of General Philip Sheridan, Generals Anthony Wayne, Green, and Montgomery, and 
Presidents Andrew Jackson and Chester Arthur, are second to no race in intelligence 
and honor, and it is Britain's brutal rule that causes these unhappy victims which that 
cruel power has now on exhibition, December, 1888. 



ARREST OF INVINCIBLES. 4^3 

they shouted they would be Boers, and died at their head fighting for lib- 
erty, than leave such a record for posterity. He himself and his followers 
are busily heaping degradation and infamy on their heads. 

On Tuesday, February 20, James Carey closed his examination in 
Kilmainham police court. Joseph Brady, Daniel Curley, and their friends' 
disgust at Carey's infamous conduct was intense. If the flash of indigna- 
tion from their eyes could have killed him, Carey would have been 
smitten by the lightning of their glances. 

The conclusion of Tuesday's examination terminated the magisterial, 
series of remands, this being the eighth day's preliminary trial in the police 
court. The Crown, now having its case completed, returned the pris- 
oners for trial before a Special Commission appointed to sit in Green Street 
Court House early in April. 

It must be recollected by those who condemn the cowardice and 
treachery of Carey and Kavanagh, that those who should have set them 
an example of courage had not only weakened, but deserted all the men 
arrested, leaving their helpless families utterly unprovided for. Irishmen 
who have sacrificed themselves to try and serve their native land, in the 
only practical manner that nations can be aided in the path toward inde- 
pendence, too often find that their families suffer for their patriotism. It 
is one of the saddest and most cruel pagesin the history of unhappy Ire- 
land. These captured men, after the first few weeks of their arrest, were 
condemned to live on prison fare. The food that had been supplied to 
them from outside was suddenly stopped. The officer of the organization 
to whom they and their families looked for financial assistance, found 
himself completely cut off from all communication ; this was through no 
misadventure, but the deliberate and cowardly act of prominent men who 
controlled large sums, fearing to place themselves in jeopardy by doing. 
their sacred and solemn duty at this crisis. The men alluded to are still 
under the enemy's flag, and very probably are to be numbered among the 
renegades that Provincialism brought over to the foe. Deserted and utterly 
alone, surrounded by treachery and neglect, these brave and noble-hearted 
men silently awaited in their bitter cold cells their approaching death for 
the land of their birth. 

The curtain in the star-chamber of Dublin Castle will be raised once 
again to exhibit Britain's two saviors, Curran and Mallon, examining another 
prisoner. This time it is a man of more than the ordinary ability pos- 
sessed by the average suspect of previous examinations. On the morning 
of Thursday, March 1, 1883, a raid was made on Blackrock Station, 
County Dublin, situated on the line of the railroad between Kingstown 
and Westland Row, Dublin. Mr. Patrick Kinsella, who was in charge of 
the station, had been in the service of the Dublin, Wicklow, and Wexford 
Railroad Co., and its predecessor the Dublin and Kingstown company, since 
his boyhood. He filled the important position of station master for over 
twenty years. He was a trusted and able official of considerable ability. 
Upon this gentleman at Blackrock, chief detective Mallon made a swoop 
in the early morning. The - British raid was disappointing ; neither pris- 
oner nor arms rewarded the enemy's sbirri. But Mallon, determined that 
he would not be altogether foiled, sent out a police officer, after the search 
had failed, who made prisoner of the station master. To the astonish- 
ment of all the respectable inhabitants of Blackrock, Mr. Kinsella was led 
away a captive and brought to Dublin Castle. There in the chamber of 
mental torture he was put by Curran upon the inquisitorial rack. From 
his somewhat public position as station master at Blackrock, Mr. Kinsella 
had a very extensive acquaintance ; most of the arrested men he knew 
personally, and much to the surprise of both Mallon and Curran he freely 



464 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

admitted it ; he made no mystery of any of his movements ; he had no 
need to. He had contracted a strong personal friendship for both Daniel 
Curley and Joseph Brady on purely social grounds. Mr. Kinsella was a 
man who had the reputation of having never interfered in politics. The 
majority of his friends and associates were by no means men of National 
proclivities, but rather the opposite. The gentleman's manuscript is given 
here, and may possibly be read with interest. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

(1883.) 

RAID ON BLACKROCK RAILWAY STATION — ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE "NUM- 
BER ONE " THE INVINCIBLE ORGANIZATION — SECRET EXAMINATION IN 

DUBLIN CASTLE, WRITTEN BY PATRICK KINSELLA, LATE STATION 
MASTER AT BLACKROCK, COUNTY DUBLIN. 

Raid of Police on Blackrock Station — Chief Inspector Mallon Late — Mallon Arrives at 
7.30 A. M. — Every Exit and Entrance of the Station Guarded by Police — Search for 
" Number One " — Searching Beds and Mattresses — Mallon Shows " Number One's" 
Photograph to Station Master — Staggered and Surprised — The Invincible Move- 
ment — The Invincible Executive — " Very far Behind ' Number One' " — Cowards who 
Think it Diplomacy to Publicly Lie — Carey's Description of the Invincible Com- 
^nander — Finding of the Photograph — Queen's Guard of Honor — Speaker at the Hyde 
Park Demonstration — Large Reward for his Apprehension — The Star Chamber in 
the Lower Castle Yard—" The Room was Small and a Cheerful Fire Burned in the 
Grate" — " Curran Posed in an Easy Attitude, Smoking a Cigar" — " No Tear of Sensi- 
bility ever Appeared to have Dimmed the Fire of his Strong Black Eye " — 
"Between Twenty and Thirty Policemen, who were Permitted to Remain on the 
Platform from 6.15 a. M. to 7.30 A. M. to be Stared at by the Passengers, with No 
Leader and Apparently without an Object" — " Signals from Right to Left Flank of the 
Enemy " — " My First Shot had Told " — Fired Another — " Number One " had Time to 
Get Away — Private Door Left Unguarded — Confusion in the Enemy's Ranks — 
Retire to Consult — Mallon and Curran Reappear — " I had Whistled in the Storm" — 
Curran has Fury in his Looks — " Make a Clean Breast of it and you will be Looked 
After" — " Oh, Most Sapient, I have you Now " — " Verily, Most Wise, you are not a 
Daniel " — " By God, you will not Find this a Laughing Matter" — " The Locker on 
the Left of the Office as you Enter was Left Untouched " — " After Four Hours of Sharp 
Practice he Sullenly gave it up " — " Why, so be it " — " I will be a Dainty Dish to Set 
before the Queen" — Waiting Room for Crown Witnesses — "He Suggested I go 
to the Crown Witness Room as More Convenient" — "The Wind had gone to 
the Butt of the Clouds, Bringing the Rain" — Another Attempt to Entrap a Witness — 
"I will Speak to No One in Private" — Halston Street Court Room Hall — "I'll 
not till you Force me " — George Bolton, Crown Solicitor, goes to Blackrock Rail- 
way Station — The Station Master Refuses to see him Privately. 

On the 1st day of March, 1883, a force of Dublin detectives numbering 
about fifteen left Westland Row railway station by the 6 a. m. train and 
alighted at Blackrock. They remained on what we call the down plat- 
form, announcing their profession by the loafing mien and furtive looks 
peculiar to their class. The 6.30 train from Kingstown brought up half 
a dozen police in uniform, and these were joined about seven o'clock by 
seven or eight of the local police. What meant this array of force ? They 
came to arrest "Number One," "acting on information received" from 
the unfortunate Carey, who told them that that gentleman was the friend 
and guest of the station master. Why they came in such extraordinary 
force, and why they were not led rather than followed by their chief, Mr. 
Mallon, were questions that I, station master, could not answer myself with 
any other reasoning than attributing it to police stupidity ; for it is certain 
that, had " Number One" been my guest, he could have been far away 
before Mallon appeared on the scene at 7.30 to put his force in m©tion, 
especially as that gregarious force kept together like sheep on the plat- 
form, leaving the private entrance, which is not in view of the platform, 
unguarded. Mallon appeared at 7.30 and the loafing mass got into 
action. Every exit and entrance was taken charge of, and I was ordered 

465 



466 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

by a warrant signed by Spencer to admit them to my private apartments. 
Every nook was explored, even to the coal cellar, and all on and /';/ the 
beds, as well as under, for a plethoric inspector from Kingstown turned 
down the covering from each of four beds and fingered the mattresses 
with an appearance of most profound sagacity. This same sage examined 
all the books he could discover, and carried off one with some scribbling 
which he found on the pages, but which meant nothing. The unsuccess- 
ful search over, I was called aside by Mallon, and for the first time that 
morning was startled on seeing the photograph of a friend. I was really 
staggered and frightened, for up to that moment I thought that no breath 
of suspicion was attached to him. 

The photograph shown me by Mallon was the portrait of " Number 
One," whom the British Government were using every means in their 
power to capture. The reward of ^10,000 — $50,000 — which had been 
offered for his apprehension had no claimants up to this morning ; there 
appeared so far no one to betray the Invincible chief to the English 
enemy. I had strong hopes that the Castle people would not be able to 
trace " Number One," for not one of his following, save only myself, 
knew the slightest thing about him, but when I saw the picture in Mal- 
lon's hand an indescribable feeling of alarm almost deprived me of tjie 
power of speech. I knew not where he was, but then the comforting 
thought came to the rescue, and bringing with it a smile to my pale face, 
whispered " You know where he is not — he is not in the hands of the 
enemy. Smile ; let them laugh when they catch him." My fear for my 
friend was for the moment very great, but this happy thought gave back 
the strength to my limbs and freedom to my tongue. So I said to my- 
self, " There is no ill but what might be worse, if they had him he 
should be the first to die." 

I have been a follower of this gentleman from the earlier days of the 
sixties, when men's minds were filled with hopes of great things to be 
done under James Stephens and his Irish Directory. 

I was given a soldier's training — so far as it could be given in Dublin — 
by him and his friend, the afterward famous Edmond O'Donovan, war 
correspondent of the Daily News, and who was unfortunately killed in the 
Soudan with Hicks Pasha. We practiced together the use of the rifle on 
Killiney Strand and among the Bray Hills. We examined the roads all 
round Dublin for distances of over thirty miles; together we built forts in 
one strategic position and erected barricades in another (in fancy), and 
we really attained a first-class knowledge of the approaches to the city. 
We sat up late at nights, he and his brother and I and more, casting 
bullets for the Enfield rifle, and varied the employment now and again by 
taking a turn at aerial architecture, and the castles we built, and the man- 
sions which we hung in the skies, were strong and beautiful, and there in 
those mansions of hope and castles of strength we lived from early in 
the sixties till late in the same decade — till March 5, 1867, when we 
followed him that terrible night to look for the officers of the Irish Direc- 
tory, who were to meet us at the village of Tallaght ; but when we got 
there all was confusion. There was no one there who could direct us to 
where we could find the Irish army, so our castles all fell about our ears ; 
three brave youths were shot that night at Tallaght ; one policeman died 
through fright, and the valiant police inspector (Burke) went mad from 
fear also. 

In the beginning of 1882 I was induced by this irrepressible gentle- 
man to again "attempt something for the poor old land." I had at all 
times looked on my friend as too sanguine as to success in the Irish 
cause. I do not mean too visionary, — simply over hopeful, — and now 
finding him again in the field, notwithstanding the failures of the past, 




PATRICK KINSELLA. 
Late railroad station master at Blackrock, County Dublin. Said to have been in charge 
of the Dublin Invincibles during the absence of " Number One," and left in sole 
control when the Invincible Executive vanished from the scene. 



RAID ON BLACKROCK RAILWAY STATION. 467 

made me fear that he had not that profound wisdom I had at all times 
given him credit for. He was in the enjoyment of a good and success- 
ful business ; had a large and interesting family, good social standing, 
and in nearly all circumstances was happily situated. I would have dis- 
suaded him from the undertaking if I could, but, finding that impossible, 
I had only the alternative of deserting my patriotic friend in the most 
trying position of his life, or joining in the most terrible conspiracy which 
up to that time the cruelty of a conqueror had ever driven the conquered 
into. However, when he made me acquainted with his plans, and with 
the names and positions of those by whom he was commissioned, I took 
heart and joined in, and from that time till the end I did my best for him 
and for all. 

Since my arrival in the United States I have heard of many men who 
have had the unaccountable vanity or folly to pose as this gentleman. I 
have often asked myself if they would be equally anxious to take the same 
risks in Dublin. " Number One " was the commanding officer of the 
military Invincibles in Dublin City. I advisedly use the word military to 
distinguish them from the civic statesmen of the same organization — an 
organization spread all over Ireland, as the British Government knew well, 
and not confined to the metropolitan city, as some supposed. This move- 
ment sprang into existence immediately after the suppression of the 
Land League. It had at its head a number of gentlemen with great polit- 
ical influence and having command of large sums of money; otherwise it 
could not have developed so rapidly. These gentlemen were the spon- 
sors of the new organization, and they created and dictated its policy. 
Whatever praise or condemnation mankind may feel disposed to pass 
upon this policy is entirely, in the first instance, due to these statesmen, 
who authorized every action of the military Invincibles, who obeyed these 
statesmen as all soldiers obey their government. It was obviously not to 
the interest of the Castle officials to permit the knowledge to be circu- 
lated abroad that the Invincible movement was so widespread ; they 
wished the newspapers to believe that it was almost altogether confined 
to Dublin and consisted of a few men, the greater number of whom they 
had arrested. It was this knowledge of its power in the country which 
alarmed them and caused them to display such panic. 

The Dublin Invincibles knew that their organization was established 
all over Ireland, but they had no official contact with anyone outside the 
city. Whether those other districts had similar officers to " Number One " 
in command I do not know, as the principal occurrences and trials took 
place in Dublin. The members of this Invincible government have never 
been publicly known, but they were and are known to me, nor is it likely 
that their personality will ever be revealed. They proved themselves 
very cowardly when their men got into danger, and were very stupid in 
allowing so many to be wantonly sacrificed. We are not likely to learn 
any more about the mysterious executive which was behind " Number 
One," and which was very far behind him indeed. Some of these gentle- 
men are living quietly under the British flag and indorsing all it repre- 
sents, confident that their identity can never be discovered, deceiving 
others by their denials of complicity or sympathy with the Invincibles, as 
they deceived the brave fellows they slandered and betrayed by their 
neglect. 

After the departure of " Number One," I soon perceived that a panic 
spread through the ranks of this mysterious executive similar to what 
took place in Dublin Castle during the trials. In point of courage they 
were foemen worthy of each other's steel ; and if it were not for the 
brave and noble fellows that went down between them it would have 
mattered little to anyone. 



468 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Since that time those men or their friends have at intervals considered 
it wisdom to assail in the most wanton manner the policy they were 
the authors of. Their slander of the dead and their abuse of the living 
have been most cowardly. As they knew full well, they could not be 
answered back, owing to what may be possibly a false sense of honor on 
the part of those who possess the secret ; secure in the knowledge that 
their identity has never been hinted at, which they consider — and prob- 
ably it is — a great victory ; to assail principles which with them should 
be sacred was their reward for this immunity. Not one of them has had 
the chivalry to publicly rebuke his friends for this vituperation. If these 
men had changed their policy at a certain period they should have so 
communicated with their executive officer, " Number One." He gave 
them ample time to do so. They have deceived and betrayed their own 
followers by their weakness and allowed their opponents to gain an easy 
victory. Their change of front from agitators to Invincibles, which was 
probably born of passion, was followed by vacillatory and cowardly con- 
duct. What they considered prudence and judgment was most ill timed. 

In their anxiety to preserve their own personal and family ties from 
what they — accepting the public cant — admitted by their conduct was 
a blemish, they, in so stamping their own conduct, did not consider 
other men's relations or prospects in life. If rhey really held these 
opinions they are to be despised, for they were not only cowards, but 
traitors to their own consciences all through. They not only lacked the 
courage but the dignity and truth of the military branch of their organ- 
ization. The men in Dublin, in acting up to their honest convictions, 
believed that all were animated with the same honorable motives. 

I am but an humble man and do not pretend to comprehend the ideas 
of the great. I hear a good deal said about policy and expediency 
by cowards who think it diplomacy to publicly lie. I thoroughly and 
heartily despise them. In my humble judgment this policy of hypocrisy 
is both dastardly and unmanly. 

Whenever I hear of a " truly great Irishman " (according to the bom- 
bastic hero worship of the time) denouncing and slandering the Invincibles 
and their plan of campaign I am tempted to put the question to myself, 
" Was this man another member of the mysterious Invincible govern- 
ment?" Probably he was. It is announced at this time that there 
is to be a London trial as a certain ex-member of the British Parlia- 
ment feels insulted at the London Times remarks. This individual, 
evidently anxious to drag himself into public notice, seeks a quarrel with 
this brutal London journal.* If this trial comes off, there will be oaths 
taken, and men will unblushingly assert before mankind not only what is 
not true, but the opposite to their cherished convictions. 

But to dismiss the subject of these smiling poltroons, whose existence 
must forever remain a living lie, I return to what I was about to say of 
" Number One." 

When Carey turned informer — which I positively knew four days 
before he was placed on the witness stand — the officials were much dis- 
appointed at the limited extent of his knowledge. One piece of what 
was considered valuable testimony the Castle people looked upon as most 
important. This was his description of the officer at the head of the 
Invincibles in Dublin. This man Carey said he knew very well both by 
appearance and from having personal relations with him. He stated that 
this officer controlled the whole organization in Dublin City. But who 
this mysterious chief was Carey could not tell. He described him as a 
gentlemanly person, whom he felt certain was or had been a military man. 

*The trial here spoken of was Frank Hugh O'Donnell's threatened action against 
the London Times. 



RAID ON BLACKROCK RAILWAY STATION. 469 

Carey was under the impression that he was an Irishman serving in the 
army of some European power. He impressed this so persistently on 
the British official mind that the whole force of the Government machinery 
used in such secret service was put into action examining the records of 
the foreign Irish serving in the Continental armies. The few Invincibles 
in Dublin with whom he had personal relations knew him. by no other 
name than" Number One." Various and strange speculations started in 
Dublin Castle about this mysterious personage and who he might prove 
to be. All sorts of guesses were made ; several people whose personal 
appearance was very different were suspected. As soon as Carey's evi- 
dence came before the public the newspapers increased the number of in- 
dividuals who in their estimation might have been the owner of this peculiar 
nom de guerre, some mythical and some in the flesh. Every profession 
and country contributed their quota. Among the European public men 
spoken of was General McAdaras of the French Army. This Irishman, 
who earned distinction in the military service of his adopted nation, was 
by common consent supposed to be the much sought for Invincible offi- 
cer. It eventually became such a mystery that the general public began 
to pronounce "Number One " a myth and the creature of Carey's brain. 
The Castle people, who were at first in as great a state of mystification as 
the press and public, had discovered a solution of the mystery, but 
they preserved this secret. All this time the British journals were filled 
with absurd speculations and wild conjectures. 

On the Sunday immediately following the public appearance of Carey 
as an informer, the police in London entered the house of one of Mr. 
Parnell's friends, Mr. Byrne, who was then secretary for the National 
League in England. They discovered in an album in this gentleman's 
house a photograph which so nearly fitted Carey's description of the 
mysterious Invincible that they immediately secured it. But for the find- 
ing of this photograph "Number One" would have remained, like the 
Invincible executive, the greatest mystery of the nineteenth century. 
When this photograph was shown to Carey the next day in Dublin he at 
once recognized it as the picture of the gentleman whom he described in 
his evidence. The authorities soon learned who was the original of the 
photograph, and when they did so they were more puzzled still and 
began to doubt the correctness of Carey's identification. They were 
informed that this gentleman was a most loyal man, the very opposite to 
the person they had pictured. He was a member of Company I, 
Queen's Westminsters, one of the select London volunteer regiments. 
This regiment was commanded by the Duke of Westminster and was 
considered a very special London corps. When the new law courts in 
the Strand, London, were officially opened by the Queen in royal state 
the Queen's Westminsters were paid what was considered a distinguished 
honor by being permitted to take official part in the ceremonies of the 
day, and with the household troops formed part of her Majesty's guard 
of honor. This pageant took place early in December, 1882, seven months 
after the affair in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, and one month before the 
Dublin arrests. The only other volunteer regiment permitted to turn 
out on the occasion — so hedged in is the divinity of a British sovereign — 
was the Inns of Court, but as this regiment is exclusively composed of 
lawyers it had a special privilege. Early on the morning of this gala day 
nearly five hundred of the Queen's Westminsters in full uniform mustered 
at their armory near Buckingham Palace Gate. Colonel Busby, the com- 
manding officer, read the regiment a letter received from the Horse 
Guards limiting their guard of honor to one hundred selected men. The 
regiment was mustered in column, the colonel and Sergeant-Major Fowler 
walking along the line picking out the Sovereign's guard. One of the 



47° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

men chosen by the colonel for this post of honor was the original of the- 
photograph found in Mr. Byrne's house. As a member of the Queen's 
Westminsters that day marching with the regimental guard and band, 
saluting and being saluted by her Majesty's household troops, the Life 
and Horse Guards, was to be found the original of this portrait. As the 
" Queen's " marched through St. James' Park the recently returned 
heroes of Tel-el-Kebir saluted them. These gigantic warriors, mounted 
on magnificent horses, were that morning arrayed in their gorgeous and 
showy uniforms, which they left behind them when going soldiering in 
Egypt. 

There are few things more romantic in history : the Queen's guards 
saluting the captain of a body of Irish guerrilla soldiers engaged in a 
species of terrible warfare against what these Irishmen believed were 
their country's bitter enemies. 

The Dublin Castle people also learned that he was with his regiment 
at the Easter Monday review, and shared in the sham battle at Ports- 
mouth, and that he also attended the annual muster of the "Queen's" 
in Hyde Park. They learned he was in Scotland at that time, but visit- 
ing at various hotels in that country. The detectives found those who 
knew him incredulous when communicated with ; he was conservative and 
non-political in the society of his friends, who were business men and 
others of social standing. The colonel and officers of the regiment 
received the news from Ireland as too absurd. They would not believe 
it. In Company I, where he was best known, they were inclined to look 
upon it as a practical joke. Major Starkey, the captain of Company I, 
pooh-poohed it as a sensational canard. 

But what was still more astounding to the British Government was 
his intimate and friendly association with several of the officials in the 
Irish Office, London, and his frequent visits to the Government offices at 
Queen Anne's Gate. The officials who traveled with Mr. Forster and the 
other Irish Secretaries were personal friends of his. He was, they 
learned, actually in the Government Buildings, London, when Irish dis- 
patches were received. He was known to have entered that office on the 

1 2th of July, in company with Mr. , the manager, and several other 

gentlemen, and, as the Government officials thought, to celebrate the day, 
he wore an orange lily in his coat. The subject turned upon the humor 

of some noble peer. Mr. expressed his regret that he had not had 

the pleasure of his company that morning in the House of Lords when 
the royal sanction was given to the Irish Crimes Act. 

These gentlemen thought their visitor was as enthusiastically British 
as they were themselves ; to suspect the loyalty of their friend never 
for a moment entered their heads. Those who boast of diplomacy should 
feel satisfied that it was carried out to its perfection in this instance. 

The Castle people easily located him in Jury's Hotel, Dublin, where 
he had been staying for some time previous to the 6th of May, and they 
learned that he left Dublin on the Thursday evening after the exciting 
event of the previous Saturday. But then, as a commercial traveler, he 
had been accustomed to spend his time in hotels for years, as his business 
required it. The Castle people felt certain they had a clew to his where- 
abouts, and that they would soon succeed in capturing him. Mr. Murphy, 
the Crown counsel, now a judge, said, on the final examination of the 
prisoners before the magistrates, that he would for certain have" Number 
One " to present to them in the dock by the following Saturday. 

One feature of his political career which made the British officials 
doubly anxious for this mysterious man's capture was his association with 
the Irish Parliamentary party. In the course of their investigations they 
learned that he was a constant visitor to the Land League headquarters 



RAID ON BLACKROCK RAILWAY STATION. 471 

in Palace Chambers, Westminster, and took a prominent part in all the 
meetings and discussions which took place during the eventful winter of 
1881. That he was considered by them of sufficient importance to be 
selected as one of the public speakers at the great demonstration held in 
Hyde Park, London, to protest against the arrest of Charles Stewart 
Parnell, by orders of the British Premier, Mr. Gladstone ; and that he 
actually took part in this demonstration and made a speech from the same 
carriage in Hyde Park as William Redmond, one of the Parliamentary 
leaders, who was his companion in the vehicle, forcibly convinced the 
British officials and Government of the close identity which existed be- 
tween this hostile Irish officer, the leader in the Phoenix Park tragedy, and 
the apostles, leaders, and lights of what is termed " legal and constitu- 
tional agitation." 

A large reward offered for his apprehension, and also for information 
as to his whereabouts, sharpened the wits and stimulated the energies of 
England's usually blundering police force. 

Much of the foregoing information of the movements of my friend I 
learned from himself on such occasions as he visited Dublin. Of the 
discovery of his picture I was afterward informed. When " Number 
One" was leaving, he put me in communication with some of the guiding 
stars of the constitutional agitation, men of ability certainly, but en- 
dowed with a very plentiful lack of physical and moral courage and 
manly honesty ; fit for any emergency until it arose, and then — why, Bob 
Acres has broken a mirror, every fragment whereof reflects back a Bob. 
When I waited on some of these great statesmen — whose names are as 
familiar on the lips of Irishmen as household words — for the transaction 
of business connected with the Invincible organization, they evinced the 
most indecent haste to get rid of me. If necessary supplies formed the 
occasion of my call, money was thrust into my hand uncounted and I was 
put out to do as I liked — put out without having a word of encouragement 
spoken to myself or one of inquiry for my friends in prison at the time. 

" Number One " had given me an address where, in case of emer- 
gency, I could correspond with him, using our secret code. These com- 
munications could only reach him through the agency of other people, 
and I at times knew nothing of his whereabouts. 

When these great chiefs of the agitators and Invincibles (what a com- 
bination of titles !) deserted me in Dublin and deserted the young men 
in prison, who looked to me as the only one in communication with those 
whose duty it was to help them, I sent a dispatch to " Number One," but 
it never reached him. After passing through the usual channels it was 
destroyed without reaching my friend. These heroic chiefs did not give 
me a hint on the occasion of my last interview that they were about to 
leave ; indeed they spoke not at all, only desired me to be careful of 
attracting observation on my departure. 

I had some expectation that these statesmen would have given me 
orders to communicate with some of the other Invincible bands in Dublin 
whose ranks had been untouched in the recent arrests, but they did not. 
I had expected on my first interview with these gentlemen, that a matter 
of supreme importance of which " Number One " had instructed me 
previous to his departure would have been the first to occupy their atten- 
tion, but I received no orders from them whatever. 

The departure of these agitators occurred two days before Mallon's 
raid on Blackrock. In no pleasant frame of mind at their desertion, 
and filled with sad thoughts of the poor boys in prison, and of my absent 
friend of whose whereabouts I knew nothing, I had scarcely recovered 
from the shock I received when shown his picture. Mallon asked me 
if I knew him. 



47 2 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVISIBLES. 

•' Yes, intimately, for many years." 

" What was his business ? " 

"Commercial traveler." 

" For what house ? " 

" Not able to say." 

" When did you see him last ? " 

" About a month ago, I think, but am not certain." 

" Admit knowing him ? " 

" Certainly. What are you driving at ? but I suppose you know best." 

The clown was puzzled that I did not deny all knowledge of " Number 
One." If for any reason I had been stupid enough to do so, every man 
under me at the station could have contradicted me. By this time I was 
satisfied " Number One " was not captured, and my relief was so great 
that I was not only equal but superior to the occasion. At twelve 
o'clock I found myself in what Mr. Curley called "the star chamber," 
in the lower Castle yard, where he and the other victims had gone to the 
extent of denying each other to-day and admitting acquaintanceship to- 
morrow, for these men were there the preceding December for many days 
during the progress of 'a preliminary secret inquiry. After I had been 
sworn I was pointed out a chair, wherein I sat and awaited develop- 
ments. The room was small and a cheerful fire burned in the grate. 
Leaning against the mantelpiece on which stood the photograph of " Num- 
ber One," Curran posed in an easy attitude, smoking a cigar. His hair 
was black and his cheek bones unusually high, his chin and upper lip were 
close shaved, his side whiskers formed a black, impenetrable jungle. No 
tear of sensibility ever appeared to have dimmed the fire of his strong 
black eye, whose stern glance had so often during this misery-creating 
inquisition impressed others that it could read their thoughts, especially 
when its lying owner told them that their thoughts were known to him 
already, that their friends had revealed them, and that prevarication or 
denial would be useless; therefore make a clean breast of it and they 
would be safe. 

Thank God, no human eye or brain can read the secret thoughts of 
others. Each man is a world within himself. Mallon stood with folded 
arms, tall and good-looking, catlike, silky, suave, and bland, with a stereo- 
typed smile, which he put on to suit the occasion, but which through his 
overacting or want of acting became monotonous. He was between 
me and the door, within touch of my right shoulder. Curran was 
directly before me, and in a corner on my left front sat a good-looking 
youth at a desk taking notes. Curran undoubtedly conducted this infa- 
mous inquisition with considerable ability from a British standpoint, and 
upon his pale and somewhat cadaverous features could be read a self- 
consciousness of success together with a sneering contempt for the 
unfortunates with whom the situation brought him into daily contact. 
Scorn is, however, a more or less annoying feeling, and in my case Curran 
cast it off. In good language, well attuned to please the ear, he told 
me that, though he regretted the necessity that compelled him to have 
me brought before him, that regret was considerably mollified by his 
hope that I would depart from his presence a much happier man than I 
approached him; that before I should have taken my departure " I would 
have made a clean breast of it." He had known me from his schoolboy 
days in Kingstown during the time of his sainted mother and never-to-be- 
forgotten father, who so ably defended Spollon (Curran persuaded a jury 
of fools to aquit the foulest wretch that ever disgraced humanity), and 
carrying his memory back with sadness of mind and a softened heart to 
that loved old time, he had noticed me (most precocious schoolboy) as 
one destined to an honorable future. I was superior to all my fellows, 



RAID ON BLACKROCK RAILWAY STATION. 473 

and for my many virtues was promoted step by step and now found 
myself loved and trusted alike by those above and beneath me and the 
general public, all of whom remarked me for my obliging disposition and 
courteous manners. He drew such a sweet picture of my goodness and 
simplicity as to make me wonder he did not ask me if I knew the nature 
of an oath. He concluded his opening observations by remarking that 
he believed I had no criminal knowledge of this terrible conspiracy, but 
that through my friendship for its leader that person made use of me 
to convey letters, keep parcels, etc., while all the time he (Curran) was 
willing to believe I had no conception of the dangerous nature of the 
business I was engaged in. 

Here I spoke for the first time since I had spoken to Mallon that 
morning, and curiously enough my own voice lent me courage, for I had 
been very much depressed : 

" And this harmless life you speak of had its course abruptly changed 
this morning to one which is likely to end in poverty and gloom by the 
appearance of between twenty and thirty police " 

" Not so many," hastily interrupted Mallon. 

I did not appear to heed the interruption, but continued to address 
Curran : 

" By the appearance of between twenty and thirty policemen, who 
were permitted to remain on the platform from 6.15 to 7.30 to be stared 
at by the passengers, with no leader and apparently without an object." 

Here there were some optical signals from right to left flank of the 
enemy. My first shot had told. I immediately fired another, and said, 
pointing to the photograph : 

" If that gentleman had been my guest, and this astonishing force had 
been sent to capture him, he had an hour to get off, as the private door 
was left unguarded." 

There was confusion in the enemy's ranks, and they retired to consult. 
I felt I had a weapon, which I determined, however, to use strictly on the 
defensive. They reappeared very soon, and the mild zephyr of Curran's 
opening observations had changed. I had whistled in the storm. Curran 
came to the attack boldly. There was a fury in his looks, fierce but well 
restrained. He lit another cigar and resumed a conversational attitude : 

"As I have remarked, I am willing to believe you have no criminal 
knowledge of this business, but even assuming such were possible, you 
may not have gone too far to retreat, and by answering my questions 
straight and truly you need not fear the future, even though your present 
situation should be imperiled. Make a clean breast of it and you will 
be looked after." 

I said : " I am here to answer your questions straight." 

Something in my tone caused Curran to give up smoking, for he bit 
the end off his cigar, retaining it in his mouth, and threw the lit portion 
of it in the fire. After two or three turns of the "quid" he said : 

"We have ways of knowing things here which render it worse than 
folly on the part of any person we may summon before us to deny directly 
or endeavor to do so by prevarication or evasion, for any such will, under 
the trying nature of the times, be visited by the severest punishment due 
to the grossest perjury." 

I said : " I fully understand you. I will answer without the slightest 
prevarication or evasion.'" 

My voice appeared again to disagree with his enjoyment in the 
matter of chewing, for, throwing the "quid" into the fire, he took another 
cigar. 

" You know this ' Number One ' ? " 

"Yes, very well." 



474 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

" How long ? " 

" Since about the year 1857." 

" What business does he follow?" 

" That of commercial traveler." 

" For what house and where situated ?" 

" In London situated, name and business I know not." 

" Do you mean to tell me you don't know what business his firm 
carry on ? " 

"Yes ; when we meet we simply amuse ourselves by chatting of the 
past, not having any mutual interest in business." 

He inquired all about the past of " Number One," and I answered 
promptly and with few reservations. Still he appeared unhappy, for he 
said I was concealing all I could, but he would come at it. After a short 
pause he appeared to have come to the conclusion that the present cigar 
was unfit either to smoke or chew, for he threw it bodily into the fire, 
and turning his back upon it, while placing his hands behind him, he 
proceeded, as did Simon Tappertit with Dolly Varden, to " eye me over," 
with a view to conquest. After taking a mental inventory of my cover- 
ing from shoe to necktie he fixed his hard eye on mine, and informed me 
that if I thought I could throw dust in his eyes he was firmly convinced 
that any attempt of that sort on my part would be a failure. I assured 
him that it had not occurred to me to indulge in such a freak, and finally 
desired him to understand that I should confine myself to answering his 
questions, not having any information to impart. Now began the process 
by which Farrell and the other wretched informers were manufactured 
into Crown witnesses. I was told that my secrets were known to 
him (Curran) from sources which the Castle authorities alone knew, and 
that a knowledge of these secrets had come from my friends, and that 
any attempt on my part at concealment would be visited by the direst 
punishment, and that by making " a clean breast of it " (his common 
phrase) as my friends had done, I would deserve the esteem of a law- 
abiding people, and earn my restoration to freedom and respectability. 
Oh, most sapient, I have you now ! My friends know my serious secrets ! 
Verily, most wise, you are not a Daniel ! Let it not be thought that the 
tone or style of any of my replies was the outcome of bravado or 
defiance. My nature is opposed to all exhibition of either, and any such 
exhibition just now would be as silly as my Lord Mayor Sullivan's 
parade to trial in his robes. I was saddened at the impending fate of my 
friends, especially the trusting and brave young Brady, who loved my 
company so well and in whose society I was a boy again. I knew noth- 
ing of the position of " Number One," and I will confess I was fearful 
for myself ; but these feelings were accompanied by a good, wholesome 
savage anger. 

Curran fixed his hard eye on mine and said, more in a tone of asser- 
tion than inquiry : 

" You know Carey ? " 

" Yes, by sight " 

"What! " 

" I have just said by sight." 

" Oh ! And when and how did you come to know him by sight, 
pray ? " 

" On a Sunday about the beginning of last autumn I saw him with 
a party of his friends in a tavern at the end of the Vale of Clara, two 
miles from the Seven Churches." 

" And how did you come to see him there ? " 

" I was on my way to the Churches with Mr. of Blackrock, and 

we stopped in there for refreshments." 



RAID ON BLACKROCK RAILWAY STATION. 475 

" Was it not on last Whit Monday that you were one of Carey's com- 
pany at the Churches ? " 

" Never was in his company at any time or place." 

" Did you not first become acquainted with Carey in the month of 
May, when you were sent to his house with letters by ' Number One ' ? " 

"No." 

"And how did you know Carey at the Churches if you had no fore- 
knowledge of him?" 

" He was pointed out to me by a friend as the man who had exposed 
some jobbery in the Dublin sewers, and as a person likely to become 
famous." 

" Did you ever see him at Blackrock ? " 

" I saw him passing through the station on one occasion." 

" Was it before you saw him at the Churches ? " 

It will be thought that this last question was silly — by no means ; it 
was put to confuse. So I answered him with half the shadow of a sneer : 

"As my first sight of him was at the Churches it naturally follows 
that it was after that." 

" What time was it ? " 

" I took no note." 

" Did he go there to meet ' Number One ' ? " 

" Can't say." 

" Did you follow him out and guide him to ' Number One ? ' " 

"No." 

" You are concealing the truth, and I will have it from you if I be 
obliged to put you on the table." 

Mallon here informed Curran that truth was in a well, and Curran 
said it was certainly not in some people, but from these very people 
he was determined to extract it, which observation prepared me to believe 
that Mallon was a man of very original ideas, and that Curran had not 
the logic which might be expected from his father's son. Through the 
questions which followed I discovered a change of front on the part of 
my enemy, and also that Carey had given him every information in his 
power, and which was considerable in my case, but which information 
he could not extract from me. He knew me to be the intimate of 
" Number One," and believed, like many others, that I was the repository 
of the secrets of the Invincibles ; therefore to be able to wring those 
secrets from me, and face me with them over my signature "on the table," 
would have been a triumph second only to the capture of "Number 
One " himself. In this attempt he was, to use an old phrase, " trying to 
make a silk purse out of a pig's ear." His change of front, however, 
was wise, being well calculated to confuse. 

He questioned me sharply about a Mr. Clancy, a great friend of Mr. 
Parnell and Mr. William O'Brien, and a member of the City Council. He 
was not made happy by my replies, for I actually knew nothing of the 
man, and Curran held to the belief I did. He asked me how often I had 
drank whisky with a priest in my office, and my simply truthful reply of 
" Never " left him still unhappy. He suddenly threw " Number One " at 
me again, then Clancy and the priest, and after a very short pause he 
shot Carey and Whit Monday at me again, and I said : 

" Did Whit Monday ever come so late as August ? Perhaps, but it 
never fell on Sunday." 

If I had betaken myself to the amusement of flinging dust in his 
eyes, notwithstanding his cautioning me not to, and having missed his 
eyes landed it on his poll, he could not have sent his left hand to his back 
hair in search of it with more energy than he did now ; then taking it 
back with equal haste, he struck it with the right, perhaps to rebuke it 



476 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

for not finding the dust, and said : "By God, you will not find this a 
laughing matter ! " Both hands retired behind his back, where they 
embraced and made up their differences. 

" What were the nature and contents of that parcel which was left with 
you by a Mrs. Williams, and what became of it? if it be not a waste of 
time to ask you." Turning to Mallon he said : " No trace ? " 

" None," said Mallon, who appeared to be evidently in a deep study 
of his finger nails, after the manner of a fifth-rate actor recalling his part. 

The business was becoming warm and interesting to me. This parcel 
and Mrs. Williams amused me very much — all the more that I knew 
nothing about them. I had noted the defective search in the morning, 
and I was now furnished with the means of taking advantage of it. I 
said: 

" So there was a parcel also to be taken this morning ? It must not 
have been of much importance ; the search was not very exhaustive." 
This to Mallon, who left off reading his finger nails for a moment, and 
said the search was thorough. 

I said : " The locker op the left of the office as you enter was left 
untouched." 

" You can't know ; you were upstairs." 

I said : "My people had their eyes open." Another dash for "the 
table." 

After a moment's pause they retired ; when they returned Curran led 
off with : 

" Do you persist in denying your knowledge of Carey? " 

" I persist in asserting my total want of knowledge of the man." 

From this point to the end of the examination there appeared a falling 
off of bitterness on the part of Curran, who said coolly enough : 

" I believe you will stick to what you say." 

The following narrative in reply to his questions I make as short as 
I can : I became acquainted with Joseph Brady at Blackrock ; I had 
forgotten him till he reminded me of the day at Lara Bridge, where 

Mr. and I amused Carey's company without knowing it by some 

quaint remarks on things in general. I knew Daniel Curley through his 
having done some work for Mr. Meagher of Blackrock, a friend of mine. 
I first saw James Mullet at his own house on the occasion of my visit 
with Sergeant Doyle (who was wounded at Tel-el-Kebir in Egypt ; his 
brother was one of my railroad staff) to the Royal Barracks to visit the 
sergeants' mess and see the piece of plate which was presented to 
Sergeant Danvers by Trinity College for getting into a street row and 
coming out of it with a whole skin. James Mullet kept a quiet tavern, 
and we went in there. Mullet being an affable man, I formed his 
acquaintance, and so on through my examination. There was no 
shuffling or prevarication in my replies, which were promptly given. I 
was led by his questions through the principal figures of the time, whose 
acquaintance I admitted so readily, while explaining the simple natural 
events which led up to the acquaintance, that he had only to say I was a 
man of the most curious coincidences. That great gun "the table" was 
now silent, and after nearly four hours of sharp practice he sullenly gave 
it up. He had made no breach ; the silk purse was a failure ; the pig 
had saved its bacon. He said he would take no steps till the following 
Monday, giving me the interim to consider, and added, with an eleva- 
tion of his brows and in a wonders-will-never-cease sort of tone : " Upon 
my soul, you give a most extraordinary account of yourself." On Mon- 
day I was not put to the question. I was only met with the remark : " I 
suppose you hold to your evidence of Thursday ?" "Yes." I was 'very 
much surprised on being asked did I see "Number One" on Saturday 



RAID ON BLACKROCK RAILWAY STATION. 477 

evening. " No." " He certainly went from Westland Row on a 
Kingstown train on Saturday evening." I said : " I wish I knew where 
he is and that he is safe," and I added : " What with Carey and his letters, 
Clancy, whom I don't know, Mrs. Williams and her parcel, the priest 
and his whisky, and now ' Number One ' on Saturday evening, you are 
being misled to an astonishing extent." I was let off ; but I thought I 
saw the end was not yet, nor was it. It was not until Fitzharris was put 
on his trial for conspiracy, he having been acquitted of the capital 
charge, that I was summoned to Green Street as a witness on behalf of 
her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen against my friends ! What was 
Curran's game ? I asked myself, and I repeated again, What ? Was it to 
put me on " the table " after all ? Why, so be it. I will be a dainty dish 
to set before the Queen. But what if he or his employers — for I cannot 
think he will advise the move himself — what if he or they just pop me up 
like Jack-in-the-box to be merely seen there and pull me down again 
before a question is put to me, thus by implication demonstrating me the 
informer without the possibility of refutation on my part until, perhaps, 
too late ? 

This was the most reasonable view I could take of the move at the 
moment, and I was actuated by it in my subsequent conduct. I was con- 
ducted to the Halston Street entrance of the famous Green Street court 
house and left standing in the center of a square hall or waiting room, 
each side of which was furnished with a long wooden bench or form, 
which were occupied by the friends and relatives, male and female, of the 
prisoners who were to be tried for conspiracy. Brady, Curley, and the 
other principals had been tried, and of course convicted. In the right- 
hand corner stood a door communicating with some other part of the 
building, which I noticed was being made frequent use of by the judges, 
counsel, and officials, and in the corner of the hall to the left was a door 
opening to the waiting room for court witnesses, and also a flight of steps 
leading to the public part of the court ; the Crown solicitor's (George 
Bolton) office was approached by the left-hand corner. As I stood there 
an audible whisper passed along the benches of sad and wistful faces 
which made me feel more nervous than could a constellation of legal 
luminaries, each armed with proof of damaging guilt against me. I was 
relieved — or I should say distracted — from this embarrassing feeling by 
the approach of a tall, dark, handsome man in the uniform of a superior 
officer of the police, who informed me non-officially that the day was 
fine for the season, and that his impression was it would continue so if 
the wind did not change to the butt of the clouds. After delivering 
himself of these weighty matters, to which I attempted to reply in terms 
equally brilliant, but failed, he suggested that I should go to the Crown 
witness room as being more convenient. I had observed that unless a 
person spoke very low his voice could be heard in any part of the 
hall, therefore I said in my ordinary tone that I had no business there, 
not being a Crown witness or witness of any kind. Then why was I 
brought there, might he ask ? Oh, yes, he might ask, but I could not an- 
swer, not knowing myself. I hoped, however, to be enlightened in the 
fullness of time. He had no doubt the Crown saw their way. I was sure 
that after my candor with them in the Castle they should have seen their 
way before now, but without annoying myself as to the state of the 
Crown's vision, I saw my way very clearly, and that acting the part of 
Crown witness was not before me. The wind had gone to the butt of the 
clouds, bringing the rain. He went through the right-hand corner, for 
shelter doubtless, and I saw him no more. Mallon and Curran passed 
out separately, but did not speak. After a short time a detective emerged 
from the right-hand door and told me a gentleman wished to speak to me. 



478 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

I said I would speak to no one in private. I should be spoken to in that 
hall. He went and returned soon, saying quietly enough that it might 
be better I go in a moment. " I'll not till you force me." He dis- 
appeared, and I did not see him after. In about half an hour the 
man who came for me in the morning told me I was not wanted till 
the morrow. On the morrow and day following I attended in the 
hall, and on the evening of the third day Inspector Scully told me I 
was required no more. But Mr. George Bolton was inclined to take an 
interest in me, and after the lapse of about eight days from the Green 
Street business he came to Blackrock, but in the presence of all my 
people and others I refused to speak to him privately, as he desired. 
And so the matter dropped, leaving me the loser, for the props of the 
house wherein I lived were shaken. 

(Signed) Patrick Kinsella. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

(1883.) 

TRIAL AND DEATH OF THE CAPTURED INVINCIBLES — JOSEPH URADV's 
STOICISM IN THE DOCK EVOKES ADMIRATION. 

Green Street Court House, Dublin — A Regiment of Soldiers Billeted in Detachments 
around the Court House — Dublin Garrison Under Arms — Irish Feeling Bitterly 
Hostile to British Rule — The Black Caravan Escorted by a Troop of Dragoons — 
The Captured Invincibles Arrive — Greeted with a Ringing Irish Cheer by the Crowds 
Outside — Artificial Terrors of British Vengeance — Joseph Brady in the Dock — He is 
Utterly Alone — Deserted by his Friends — The Enemy Appoints him Counsel — Base 
Treason and Cowardice of Leaders — They had not Fled to any Foreign Land, but 
their Cowardly and Craven Spirits had Fled — Scene in the Court House — The Jury 
Arrive with the Verdict — " He Braced himself up Boldly, Stood there with Head 
Erect Facing the Court, as if he at least could never say Die " — Joseph Brady was 
not Overcome by the Verdict — "He Fell Back on that Tremendous Strength of 
Will" — " Stubborn Pride and Hatred " — Sentenced to Death — "There were Blood and 
Fire in the Beauty of your Character " — Sketch of Joseph Brady — Trial of Daniel 
Curley — Sentenced to Death — Sketch of Daniel Curley — " I Love my Country and am 
Ready to Suffer for her " — Michael Fagan's Trial — " He was an Irish Nationalist and 
would Die One " — Thomas Caffray Sentenced to Death — Timothy Kelly Sentenced 
to Death — Joseph Mullet Refuses to be Represented by Counsel — Does not Recog- 
nize the Legality of a Foreign Court of Justice — British Jurisdiction not Legal in 
Ireland — Sentenced to Penal Servitude for Life — Evidence of Respectability — Judge 
O'Brien Exclaims : " The Terrible Thing Connected with this Dreadful Conspiracy is 
that they are All Honorable and Respectable Men who are Indicted" — Whit Mon- 
day, 1883 — Ireland in Mourning — Dublin City in Grief — Churches Filled with 
Mourners — Shops with Closed Shutters and Mourning Emblems — British Soldiers 
Massed around Kilmainham Jail — Newspaper Men Refused Admittance — Crowds of 
People Gathered Outside — Joseph Brady Dies — The Black Flag — The Kneeling Weep- 
ing Crowd — "Loyal and Noble as the Idolized Emmet" — Friday, May 18 — Deaih 
of Daniel Curley — Crowds Outside — The Father and Father-in-law of the Dead 
Nationalist — Other Nationalists Die on the British Scaffold — The Red Earl and the 
Assisted Emigrants' Wail of Agony — The Death Cry of the Dying Gael. 

On Monday, April 9, 1883, the curtain arose in Green Street court 
house, Dublin, upon the mock ceremonial entitled the trial of the Invin- 
cibles. How many Irishmen in generations past have stood within that 
human shambles to leave it for the scaffold ? How many noble-hearted 
men have been done to death there in mock legal form by the myrmidons 
of the invading power, who through generations of bloodshed have 
usurped the government of Ireland? The enemy had made every pre- 
caution to guard against surprise. A regiment of soldiers was billeted 
in detachments in the houses surrounding the court house. If an in- 
vading army of French, Russian, or German troops was about to make a 
descent upon Dublin there could not be more serious preparations made 
to receive it, or more vigilance and caution used than the British 
made to meet any possible onslaught of the mysterious Invincibles. The 
court house was not only guarded on the outside, but inside this so- 
called temple of justice were crowds of armed police, detectives, and 
marines. Judge O'Brien — an ex-Home Ruler, save the mark ! — who was 
to preside at these trials was carefully guarded to and from the court. 
He entered with nervous trepidation, and seemed to feel like a man who 
was compelled against his will to lead a forlorn hope, and had the scaling 
of a fortress vomiting death before him, instead of the ordinary peaceful 

479 



4S0 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

duty of a judge about to administer justice from the bench. Fifty per- 
sons representing European, American, British, and Irish papers, after 
repeated careful scrutiny, were the principal, almost the only, portion of 
what is termed the public admitted inside the precincts of the court. 
Every regiment in Dublin was held ready for any armed resistance. 
Infantry, cavalry, and artillery were on the qui vive. The British foe 
was face to face with Irish feeling, bitterly hostile, and how far this was 
a matter of the usual sentiment, or the more practical opposition recently 
displayed, he could not tell, but was prepared for all possible emergencies. 
In the very trepidation so plainly shown at this time by Ireland's foe 
Irishmen should read the lesson taught by deeds, and cease this idle 
babble of fighting the enemy by words. 

Escorted by a troop of dragoons, and preceded by mounted police, 
comes the black caravan from Kilmainham jail. The clatter of the 
accoutrements and the glitter of drawn sabers look more like the escort 
of a prince or potentate than the careful guarding of five Invincibles. 
The doors of the van are unlocked, and out step in the midst of these 
armed British Joseph Brady, Daniel Curley, Thomas Caffray, Timothy 
Kelly, and John Fitzharris with the appearance and mien of spectators. 
They did not look like principals in the bloody drama that court house 
was about to witness. Not one of these men but knew he faced certain 
death, and yet they were the only light-hearted men there. A few days 
before, walking in the prison ring during recreation hour, Timothy 
Kelly, with the merry raillery of the noble boy's light heart, said jokingly 
to Joseph Brady that they had good necks for the rope; and they laughed 
and passed along that Irish badinage which might better suit a scene of 
festivity than the confines of a prison. Not all the artificial terrors of 
British vengeance could rob them of their gay Irish hearts. The crowd 
outside, principally composed of the enforced idlers with which the dearth 
of employment caused by foreign rule has deluged all Irish cities and 
towns, set up a ringing Irish cheer. It was the voice of sympathy which 
the Irish race held for its accused champions. Men who had been 
lukewarm and indifferent before began now to fully realize one fact, 
which was that these brave men, if actually the persons they were said to 
be, had risked their lives and brought themselves beneath the shadow of 
the gallows for the love of Ireland and hatred to her oppressors. These 
imprisoned men were born and reared near where they were soon to 
die, and knew full well what the shout of the populace outside meant : 
that they were with them in sympathy and shared their feelings against 
the British invader. The grand jury find true bills against Joseph 
Brady, and his trial is fixed for Wednesday ; by and by the grand jury 
return true bills against the other four. 

Wednesday morning comes, and Joseph Brady takes his stand within 
the dock. He is now alone, more utterly alone than even the absence of 
his comrades and former companions could make him feel. He is there 
without a friend or one kindly look of sympathy. The cheers of the 
outside crowd have died away, and the mock ceremonial, the certain 
sequel of which he knows so well, has commenced. Mr. McCune, his 
solicitor, has not deserted him, but otherwise he is utterly neglected. 
His enemy, the British, have to appoint counsel to defend him — a defense 
which he knows can be of no avail, but which his teachers taught him is 
one of the necessary ceremonies to be observed on such occasions, and 
the absence of all friends and means to employ counsel brings home to 
his manly spirit the bitter, humiliating feeling that he is utterly neglected. 
That the basest treason and cowardice rest somewhere he feels and 
knows, but cannot and does not know at whose door they lie. The counsel 
for the British makes his statement of the case. Mr. Porter's opening 




m^s&SNm 




JOSEPH BRADY. 
Died for Ireland, Whit Monday, May 14, 1883. 



TRIAL AND DEATH OF THE CAPTURED INVINCIBLES. 481 

words he does not heed, but when he hears his enemy's lawyer speak 
thus he listens : 

This case should teach one lesson — that there could be no honor 
among members of such a society. The men who had instigated it and 
warmed it into life, the men who had supplied it with funds which encour-' 
aged it to carry on its designs, had fled to foreign lands. If there was 
any further proof needed of how conspirators deserted those who were 
leagued with them, it was furnished by the fact that the Crown had, even 
in this case, been compelled to provide the means for defending Brady 
from this terrible charge. 

Mr. Porter was wrong : the men had not fled to any foreign land. A 
few, very few, were compelled — not to glut British vengeance by their 
deaths — to come to America. But the men at the head of the movement 
had not fled, there was no need for them to do so. But their cowardly 
and craven spirits had fled, and selfishness had taken their place. Had 
they manhood, and the practical knowledge they should have possessed, 
they could have sent joy to Joseph Brady by the only defense practicable 
for Irishmen. There were plenty of brave men in Dublin only too eager 
to carry out some plan of attack upon the foe. Even while Mr. Porter 
was speaking they could have made Dublin ring with the Invincibles' 
answer — that they had not fled, but were still determined to do or die. 
Alas for Ireland, her leaders were cravens ! 

Joseph Brady, what must have been your feelings when you heard 
these words fall upon your ear, coming from your enemy, knowing he 
could so justly hurl reproach upon your friends, and truthfully charge 
them with black, foul desertion ? As we read it at this distance of time 
we stand aghast at this cowardly action, and know not what to say or 
think. You must have felt, brave boy, a pang your enemy could never 
wring from your proud heart, standing there facing certain death. Did 
you think that even the friends you loved and trusted had basely deserted 
you like the rest ? 

On Friday, April 13, 1883, Joseph Brady's so-called trial ended. An 
English writer who was present thus describes the scene : 

"There was a rustle and movement in the court as the jury rose from 
their seats and retired to consider their verdict. . . 

" From the door at the back of the gallery the foreman of the jury was 
seen descending, followed by his colleagues, to take his place in the accus- 
tomed seat. Without a moment's delay the judge was summoned and the 
prisoner was brought up from below. He may have known from the 
fact of the jury having returned that he was a doomed man ; yet he 
braced himself up boldly to meet the sentence, and stood there, with head 
erect, facing the court, as if he at least could never say die. 

" Very slowly the jury passed into their box, looking, every one of them, 
pale and burdened with the weight of the awful responsibility resting upon 
them. As their names were being called over Joe Brady took several 
long breaths and threw his head up and his chest out ; but that he too 
felt the moment an awful crisis was apparent from his restless shifting of 
position and the constant twitching of his face. Then came the solemn 
words, ' Are you agreed upon your verdict ? Do you find the prisoner 
Joseph Brady guilty or not guilty ?' In a scarcely audible voice the fore- 
man said, ' Guilty,' and the clerk of the Crown repeated it once more to 
make sure Joe Brady was not overcome by the verdict. The emotion he 
felt he managed to conceal as far as was possible for any man to 
do. He fell back upon that tremendous reserve of strength of will, 
resolution of purpose, and stubborn pride and hatred which evidently 
belong to him. . . 



482 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

"The judge directed the clerk to ask the formal question of the pris- 
oner, whether he had any reason to allege why sentence of death should 
not be passed upon him. 

" Joe Brady's reply was characteristic of the man. ' I am not guilty ! ' 
■he half hissed, half shouted out, with a strong Irish accent and with avoice 
husky with passion. ' I am not guilty of the charge ! ' he shouted again, 
and savagely denounced what he called paid informers ' who had sworn 
falsely against him.' Then he ceased. 

" The judge, leaning forward in his chair, proceeded to say that the 
verdict was a necessary and just one. Once again the dauntless occupant 
of the dock shouted out that he was not guilty, but the judge rejoined in 
solemn tones that he felt it his duty to state that he perfectly concurred 
in the justice of the verdict. He formally, amid profound silence, passed 
the last dread sentence. 

" As the warder summoned the prisoner to withdraw he turned to his 
counsel and said in a voice of cheerfulness : ' I thank you, Dr. Webb ; I 
thank you, Mr. Adams.' " 

Joseph Brady was sentenced to be hanged on Monday, May 14, 1883. 

Heroic youth ! you were one of the guardians of liberty. You gazed 
steadily upon its dazzling beams and felt that your soul could fly through 
the lightning of revolution to bring those white-winged messengers, 
Peace and Freedom, to your prostrate and stricken land. There were 
blood and fire in the beauty of your character to baptize and purify from 
slavery your nation suffering with torture and the approaching putrefac- 
tion of enforced decay. What a contrast your single-minded devotion, 
unblemished and stainless, is to that of the men who so cowardly deserted 
you! A miasma exhales from their crouching consciences which is still 
spreading over the unhappy island. Their souls are sunken. Joseph 
Brady standing in that Green Street dock — what a picture for Irishmen 
to dwell upon. He is asked the usual formula by the invader's hireling 
why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. There was a 
moment of inexpressible silence. You could have heard the flight of 
death. He stood there, nothing to expect, nothing to hope. He knew 
he was abandoned. Let them come or let them not come to him, those 
who denied him thrice and deserted him, it makes no difference now. 
He will die as becomes a man. He has faced the grim specter ere now, 
and he has braced his soul for the ordeal. O Ireland ! can any of your 
sons stoop so low as to be base enough, dastardly enough, to dare attempt 
to fasten a stain on the pure memory of this immortal patriot ? 

The Blackrock station master, who had the manhood to acknowledge 
personal friendship and intimacy with Joseph Brady at a time when to 
do so required strong moral courage, thus describes his young friend and 
a morning's ramble they had together : 

" I remember a day spent in Joseph Brady's company. The boy 
liked my society and I enjoyed his. No two youths ever started forth 
together for the enjoyment of a holiday half so light-hearted, jocose, 
and happy as did we that morning. Joseph Brady, as usual when on 
holiday rambles, was neatly dressed in a well-fitting black frock coat 
and gloves, and altogether he was ' a very pretty fellow.' The day 
was beautifully fine, and as we were being carried along by the base 
of Killiney hill, which overhangs the bay, I permitted my fancy to 
take wing along the brown hillside, to nestle among the Swiss cottages 
and brushwood which cover it ; and his fancy joining mine, both 
seemed to leave the shore, the hills, and gamboled as butterflies in 
sunbeams. On reaching Bray we walked down the esplanade and on 
to Bray Head. I felt in Brady's society that the youthful side of my 



TRIAL/ AND DEATH OF THE CAPTURED INVINCIBLES. 483 

dual nature developed itself, and 'I dreamed I was a boy again.' 
Nay, I was a boy again, and as boys do not bother about politics we 
enjoyed that pleasant Wicklow ramble together, which comes back 
upon my memory with sadness and pleasure : sadness that one so young 
and having such noble traits of character, which grew upon me in his 
society, should be so sacrificed — pleasure that I can recall past happy 
hours. Joseph Brady was about twenty-two or twenty-three years old ; 
he stood about five feet ten inches in height, with dark brown hair and 
incipient mustache. His step was light, buoyant, and firm, his small and 
perfectly formed feet appearing to grasp the ground with the tenacity of 
the human hand. His mien was erect and graceful, giving him the 
appearance of a greater height than he possessed, while it neutralized or 
seemed to lessen his massive proportions — proportions in such perfect 
harmony that the youth stood before you as splendid a specimen of 
humanity as was ever seen in the flesh or represented in sculpture. He 
carried his head well but not stiffly thrown back, displaying a throat 
which for softness and the delicate beauty of nature's coloring rivaled 
that of many women. His well-shaped mouth was furnished with a per- 
fect set of white teeth, which glistened when he smiled that quiet smile 
which denotes and begets confidence, and his brown eyes were soft, 
expressive, and unfathomable." 

On Monday, April 16, Daniel Curley was placed in the dock. As in 
Mr. Brady's trial absent jurors were fined five hundred dollars each, but 
many men preferred paying this large sum sooner than occupy the jury 
box during these political trials. Of course these men were drawn from 
a special class, every one of them being either British, or pro-British, and 
consequently people who could afford to pay high fines. The same 
machinery which was employed in the previous trial was again set in 
motion with the same fatal result. Mr. Curley was as a matter of routine 
found guilty. 

Daniel Curley was a respectable master carpenter who executed 
small contracts in Dublin city and suburbs. It was in the carrying out of 
one of these that he got acquainted with the Blackrock station master, who 
was very courteous in his disposition and obliging to mechanics in keeping 
their tools in the station. Mr. Curley was a skilled mechanic and a very 
intelligent man, with a strong will power. As an Irish Nationalist he had 
given all the years of his yet young life to his country. He was a sincere 
and practical patriot. Mr. Kinsella thus describes him : 

" Daniel Curley was a man about thirty-two years, slightly built, but 
well formed, with dark curly hair, full beard and mustache, and of a retiring 
and quiet disposition. His face bore a thoughtful cast, which, however, 
became animated and pleasing when in friendly company, and its really 
handsome expression on such occasions became more enhanced than 
otherwise by its being slightly pitted with pockmarks." 

Daniel Curley was sentenced to be hanged on Friday, May 18, 1883. 
He addressed some remarks to the court before receiving his sentence, 
and in conclusion said he loved his country and was ready to suffer for 
her. As he left the dock he called out : " God save Ireland ! " 

On Thursday, April 19, Timothy Kelly, a young man not yet twenty-one 
years old, was put on his trial, but the jury disagreed. He was again put 
on trial the following Monday with the same result. This annoyed the 
British lawyers. Michael Fagan was put upon his trial Wednesday, 
April 25. He was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged on Monday, 
May 28. In the few words which he addressed the court he said he 
was a Fenian — in other words, an Irish revolutionist — and he would die 
one. Thomas Caff ray was induced to plead guilty, and was also sentenced 
to death. Patrick Delaney, who had by his conduct first been arrested, 



4§4 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and who since Carey's treason had been giving the British what informa- 
tion he possessed, came into the dock and made a statement which was 
evidently prepared for him by the Crown solicitor, Mr. Bolton. The 
judge went through the form of sentencing Delany to be hanged, but the 
red earl reprieved him as a reward for his services. 

Fitzharris, the cabman, was placed upon his trial for the capital 
offense, but acquitted. He was subsequently found guilty of conspiracy. 
Fitzharris, or, as he was sometimes called, " Skin-the-goat," was an 
humble, faithful, and loyal Irishman, a man who tried to practically serve 
Ireland, and one who was indeed a genuine worker in her cause. 

The youth Timothy Kelly was put on trial for the third time. This 
trial satisfied the British lust for Irish blood. The brave young boy was 
found guilty and sentenced to be hanged on June 9. He acted in the 
same manly, determined manner which characterized his friend Joseph 
Brady. 

Lawrence Hanlon was sentenced to penal servitude for life. He said, 
•on leaving the dock, in a fearless manner, " I will not be the last," mean- 
ing that as long as the British flag flew over Ireland there would continue 
conspiracies, killings, and hangings. 

Joseph Mullet, a young man of superior education and a very bright 
and patriotic Irishman, was placed in the dock. Mr. Mullet was no rela- 
tion of Mr. James Mullet, though some of the papers at the time said 
they were brothers. His patriotism and superior intelligence told him 
that it was mockery to call these ceremonials trials. He refused to 
acknowledge the British jurisdiction in Ireland, was found guilty, and 
sentenced to penal servitude for life. He told the court that there were 
men who would remember and avenge him. Let us hope for Ireland's sake 
that Mr. Joseph Mullet was not wrong in his opinion of his countrymen. 
During the trial of Mr. Timothy Kelly evidence for the defense was 
offered, including testimony as to character. O'Brien, the West British 
judge, interrupted the witness by exclaiming petulantly : " Respectable ! 
Highly respectable ! Of course he is respectable. The terrible thing 
connected with this dreadful conspiracy is that they are all honorable 
and respectable men who are indicted." This was an admission wrung 
from the instrument of British law as to the character of the men who 
were arraigned before him as Invincibles, and ought to be a sufficient 
answer to the reptile press of Britain that assailed these men with every 
imaginable vile epithet. The God-given spirit of patriotism could never 
animate the unworthy. Men who take their lives in their hands to dare 
and die for their native land are not molded out of common clay. 

On the day before his death Joseph Brady's mother visited her brave 
son to take her last farewell, to see him behind the prison bars of her 
country's destroyers, to bid him the final adieu before one of the foe- 
man's jailers. The lying slanders circulated by the usurper's detectives 
and hirelings against the character of these imprisoned Irishmen had 
horrified this Spartan Irish mother. The supposed eagerness of these men 
to supply the enemy with information that would lead to future captures 
and aid him in breaking up the Invincible organization, then supposed 
to be preparing for action in Dublin, caused her patriot soul to recoil with 
indignation at the vile slander. 

When final leave-taking came and she was taking her last look upon 
her heroic offspring, struggling with her grief, she cried out to him : " Joe, 
if you know anything don't tell it ; bring your secret to the grave." 
Joseph Brady was worthy such a mother ; Mrs. Brady deserved such a 
noble son. 

On Whit Monday, May 14, 1883, Ireland was in mourning. Dublin 
city and suburbs, wont to be so gay on this public holiday, wore a saddened, 



TRIAL AND DEATH OF THE CAPTURED INVINCIBLES. 485 

somber look. The churches were filled with pious worshipers praying 
for the departing soul of a loyal and patriotic Irishman who was soon to 
follow in the footsteps of Robert Emmet and give up his young life on 
the British scaffold. The shops had their shutters up, an emblem of 
mourning ; the holiday was suspended ; grief took the place of merriment. 
Around Kilmainham prison were massed the red-coated soldiers of the 
foreigner, fearful that his vengeance might even then be snatched from 
his grasp. So frightened and anxious were the Briton's hirelings that 
the newspaper men were refused admittance. Immense crowds of 
people were gathered outside the jail — several thousand men and women 
whose hearts were wrung with agony at the thought of that young life so 
soon to be added to the long catalogue of murders which mark the prog- 
ress of the insolent invader in the fair land of holy Ireland. Joseph 
Brady, calm and self-possessed, walked inside the prison to the scaffold, 
reciting the prayers of a Christian man who hopes soon to meet his Maker. 
In a few minutes the bolt is drawn and another life has gone to roll up 
the record of Gladstone's infamous rule in Ireland. The black flag is 
raised aloft, and as the crowds of Irish people outside see that emblem of 
death they fall upon their knees and with a half-suppressed wail of anguish 
pray for a departing soul. 

Ireland, should you ever shake off the poisonous nightmare that now 
binds up your limbs and become a free nation, the hope of generations of 
your sons, remember the man who died on that Whit Monday morning 
that you might live; and, when you are erecting monuments for your glori- 
ous dead, remember Joseph Brady occupies no second place in the bead- 
roll of your heroes and martyrs. As loyal, true, and noble as your loved and 
idolized Robert Emmet was this new-slain young Irish soldier. Erect for 
him a monument beside the patriot of 1803, for the humble Irish soldier 
who offered up his life for holy Ireland was worthy comrade to the gifted 
orator. Both will be inseparably remembered by the great and good who 
honor virtue and patriotism. In the ages to come posterity will deal as 
justly by Joseph Brady as the present generation has by Robert Emmet ; 
and if the actions of the dead Brady are properly remembered by Irish- 
men there is indeed hope for our motherland, and the sacrifice of that 
Whit Monday morning in 1883 will have been glorious and permanent 
in its result. 

The succeeding Friday witnessed another scene of agony ; the crowds 
outside Kilmainham jail in prayer, two aged men are seen standing near 
the prison who strain their eyes toward the fatal flagstaff, they are the 
father and father-in-law of Daniel Curley, the dying Nationalist. With a 
thrill of horror they see the death signal. Another son of Ireland has 
fallen to satisfy the British glut of vengeance. 

" God be with you, Daniel Curley ! " was the cry outside the prison 
walls by the weeping, praying crowd, principally composed of women, which 
we re-echo from a sad heart. 

Michael Fagan met his death as became his manly, spotless life. 
Young Kelly asked to be allowed to spend his last hours in the cell from 
which his friend Joseph had departed to the scaffold, and from that for 
him hallowed dungeon the brave and noble boy walked to his death. 
They all died for Ireland. Had not the polluted foot of the invader dese- 
crated their country their lives would have been as peaceful as citizens 
of free nations who dwell beneath the shelter of their own national 
banners. 

A scene of still greater ruin and loss to Ireland was taking place this 
same week on the west coast of Ireland — Britain's peaceful destruction of 
the Irish race. Mr. Gladstone's eviction agent, the red earl, was per- 
sonally witnessing the departure of assisted emigrants from Belmullet, and 



486 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

as the steamship Phoenician sailed away to the West there arose a loud wail 
of anguish from ship and shore. A few days later Spencer speeds to 
Galway on his errand of death from that western city. The fair and 
comely girl and the strong and stalwart youth are banished from their 
native land to disappear in the mixed peoples of the great republic, and 
as the British peer looks on at the destruction of the people, there comes 
upon the gale from the departing ship a bitter cry of agony which is re- 
echoed by the grief-stricken relatives on the shore. It is the death cry of 
the Irish Gael, the wail of the Celt at the British destroyer's annihilation 
of a grand old race. If Ireland's sons do not arouse from their Parlia- 
mentary stupor and take instant action the Irish will be soon wiped out 
of existence and the world will know them no more. 

What thinking man can compare the sadness of these hangings and 
shootings to the national death certain to ensue from this unceasing and 
enforced emigration ? Countrymen, if we are to die as a race, and leave 
but a tradition behind us as a people, let us not die by this slow decay, 
but as men worthy of our heroic sires. Let us rather die facing our 
country's foe in the death combat with our ruthless destroyer. Wailing 
is of no use ; ask the God of your fathers to strengthen your arms, pick 
up the weapon that has fallen from your dead patriots' hands, and strike the 
invader of your homes, the destroyer of your liberties. 

Sacred in the hand of Judith was the sword that took the life of Holo- 
fernes, sacred was the dagger which Harmodius encircled with roses, 
sacred was the dagger of Brutus, sacred the stiletto of the Sicilian who 
began the Vespers, sacred the arrow of Tell, sacred the knife in the hands 
of the prophet Moses that slew the Egyptian, and thrice sacred the steel 
blade in the hands of Joseph Brady around which the lightnings of justice 
wreathe in letters of fire the Mane, Tekel, Phares of foreign rule in 
holy Ireland. The tocsin with clarion sound rings out the watchword 
of an awakened nation, " Death to the assassins of our people ! the pollut- 
ers of our sacred soil ! " 



CHAPTER XXXV. 
(1883.) 

DYNAMITE WAR IN ENGLAND — EXECUTION OF JAMES CAREY — DEATH 

OF O'DONNELL. 

Seizure of Dynamite Factory in Birmingham — Panic in England — Business Upset — 
Arrest of the Home Secretary by his Own Police — Trade Paralyzed — England 
Suffering Coercion — James Carey a British White Elephant — New Zealand Report — 
The Cape — British Charges against Carey — His Description by One who Knew 
him — " Think of his Sufferings and his Ruin" — O'Donnell Leaves in the Kinfauns 
Castle — Carey Joins at Dartmouth — Scene at the City Hotel, Cape Town — Carey Gets 
Excited — Carey Changes for Natal — O'Donnell Follows in the Same Steamer — On 
Board the Melrose — July 2Q, at 3.45 P. M. — O'Donnell Shoots Carey — "O Maggie, 
I'm Shot ! " — O'Donnell Pursues Carey — The Execution Completed — Carey's Look of 
Horror — Carey Dies — Scene Described by an Eyewitness — O'Donnell Cheered by Irish- 
men as he Lands in Africa — O'Donnell's Examination — To be Sent Back to England 
— Carey's Funeral — Interred in the Jail Burying Ground — English Consternation at 
the News — Joy in Ireland — "Victory for the Invincibles " — British Government 
Astounded — Revolutionists Penetrate the Secrets of the British Executive — They 
Frustrate their Plans — News in America — O'Donnell Defense Fund — General 
Pryor Leaves for London — O'Donnell's Trial, Conviction, and Sentence — Deputation 
Wait on the President — Joseph Poole Sentenced to Death in Dublin — Parnell 
Banquet — Mr. Parnell Presented with Thirty-six Thousand Pounds — Cable of Joy 
Sent by the Parliamentary Party — Death of O'Donnell — He Did his Duty — Death 
of Poole. 

Shortly before the Invincibles' trials in Dublin all Britain was 
terrified at an explosion in Whitehall, Westminster, supposed to be 
caused by dynamite. They were still more intensely horrified and 
alarmed at discovering a nitroglycerine factory in Birmingham. It has 
been stated that the small explosion at Whitehall awoke the British to 
the knowledge of their dangerous position, exposed to these acts of war 
in their capital by their indefatigable and unrelenting Irish foe, which 
put all their sentinels instantly on the alert. It has been further stated 
that this explosion was premature and warned the enemy. A pistol shot 
saved him from the eighty-ton guns about to be trained upon his fortress ; 
the garrison was aroused from its dream of security by this ill-timed 
signal, and so saved London from what promised, to be a frightful 
catastrophe. Intense were the horror and detestation, and universal was 
the panic in England ; severe condemnation was expressed both publicly 
and privately. Many good, peaceable, well-meaning men, never caring 
and utterly and criminally heedless of the fearful infamies and cruelties 
that their Government (their own creation) carried ruthlessly and reck- 
lessly into other lands, more especially into Ireland, used an abusive 
term to describe their Irish foes. They styled them dynamite fiends. 
There is an oft-used proverb that curses, like young chickens, come 
home to roost. This vituperative slander, used by this robber nation to 
characterize Irishmen, truly and faithfully describes themselves. What 
scene in modern history could equal the brutal slaughter of the Basuto 
women and children in the African Koppie ? These British dynamite 
fiends have been the most ferocious and satanic in their career of blood 
and in their callous indifference to human suffering. 

The dynamite war in England created a panic while it lasted ; no 
Englishman was safe from arrest, the most peaceful-looking man, if he 

487 



488 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

happened to carry a black bag, was immediately pounced upon by the 
keen-scented British police ; and the consequence was that lawyers, bar- 
risters, and their clerks were put to the inconvenience of some hours' 
arrest and the necessity of giving positive proof of their identity. Com- 
mercial men were subject to the same annoyance. Hotels were emptied 
of pleasure-seeking strangers, who feared to remain in a city that was 
practically in a state of siege, fearing that possibly the buildings they 
sojourned in might be blown up over their heads. Underground railway 
travel became risky, and the mysterious dread of unseen danger unhinged 
society. Business was seriously injured, and had the dynamite war con- 
tinued in any steady manner, had the British dynamite fiend been attacked 
continually at home with his own weapon, England would have been 
suffering under a worse coercion law than she gave to Ireland : the 
latter had no manufactures or industries of importance to destroy — they 
were already wiped out of existence ; but Britain was differently placed, 
hence the greater commercial damage caused by this new, mysterious, and 
overshadowing war of destruction. Ireland's coercion was given back to 
her tyrant and invader — England. 

Possibly the " dynamiters " did not realize this. People who have 
not time or opportunity to study these questions will only speak of the 
actual destruction, which did not amount to much ; the moral panic, 
which was widespread, and the upheaval and paralysis of business, which 
had a very disastrous effect for so trifling a cause. 

The Home Secretary, Sir William Vernon Harcourt, was arrested at 
Dover on his landing from France. The police smiled with incredulity at 
this huge " dynamiter " announcing himself as the British Home Secre- 
tary. A temporary delay occurred before even the mighty Sir William 
was released by his own police force. The annoyance to British liberty 
was so great that members complained in the House of Commons. In 
reply to one of these questions Sir William V. Harcourt, in pleading the 
necessities of the times, stated the incident of his arrest as a palliative 
to other gentlemen who suffered similar inconveniences. Had a foreign 
fleet been anchored off Gravesend, and were its gunboats steaming up the 
Thames, this nation of shopkeepers could not possibly have been more 
frightened. Their pocket too felt it in the loss of trade. Pleasure-seekers 
had fled from the terror-stricken metropolis. 

Britain whined and abused and painted the horrible " dynamiter" in 
glaring cartoons. A man with this euphonic designation was depicted 
as a person of repulsive appearance, with a gorilla-shaped mouth. He 
was supposed to have a thirst for bloodshed, and his natural proclivities 
were the killing of women and children. The daily press spoke of this 
latter iniquity, but the same journals that recorded the death by dynamite 
of the many thousands of Basuto women and children have not, up to the 
present, been able to substantiate the case of a single death during the 
dynamite scare in Britain. Britain's cowardly screams for pity when she 
is struck by her foes, no matter what persecutions she has compelled them 
to endure, is most degrading to a nation that boasts of her bravery. After 
the Park tragedy she went howling over the world, and when she tor- 
tured the wretched Carey into becoming an informer she struck wildly 
in all directions. She begged France to surrender two Irishmen to her, 
Mr. Frank Byrne and Mr. John Walsh. Their complicity she took for 
granted, and although these gentlemen proved their whereabouts on the 
6th of May, and that they had not been in Ireland for months before or 
since the tragedy, she tried to force the French Government to surrender 
them to her tender mercies. She knew they were enemies to her rule in 
their country, and that sufficed. At the time of this dynamite war she 
came to this country with all sorts of preposterous requests, asking 




PATRICK. O DONNELI.. 
Died for Ireland, December, 1883. 



DYNAMITE WAR IN ENGLAND. 489 

this great nation, to whom she has always been bitterly hostile, and is to 
this day, to help her against her foes the Irish. The press here con- 
sidered it was well acquainted with these men termed " dynamiters." 
An article in the New York Herald voiced the feelings held by a great 
number of the American people then and now. This journal observed, 
speaking of the dynamiters: "We publish their utterances, and invite 
England to see what stuff these patriots are made of. But England 
refuses to see. She keeps up a wretched pother about men whose names 
are a jest for comic paragraphists here. Statesmen gravely recount in 
Parliament the terrible doings of fellows whose antics are an unfailing 
amusement to the American population, and this makes such men think 
themselves of great importance." 

The New York Herald was no doubt wondering at England's stupidity 
in taking an serieux the actions and words of the men whose utterances 
appear from time to time in the Herald and other papers. English 
statesmen, though they have a blundering police to serve them, are not so 
blind as to think the gentlemen whom the Herald alludes to are of serious 
injury to her. English statesmen know, albeit their strong language, that 
they have no more to do with the dynamite war against England than 
they have to do with an eclipse of the moon. Many of these men are 
no doubt sincere in their hatred of and wishes to hurt England, but they 
have neither the means nor the ability to fulfill their desires. Many Irish- 
men are inclined to think that the men who have carried on this war are 
to be found in the ranks of men who have been publicly denouncing it 
at the same time. They fancy by doing this they are taking a leaf from 
England's book, and practicing the same hypocrisy which she has been 
doing for generations toward Ireland. Had this dynamite war contin- 
ued, and these men by their actions given the lie to their words, no Irish 
patriot would have so much to blame them for ; but the very hypocrisy 
they were practicing undermined the public confidence, destroyed the 
work they had been engaged in, and, as all false teaching must, ended by 
bringing disaster and confusion to the cause. The American press was 
misled, the Irish people misled, but the English enemy in no way led astray. 
Many of these men whom the New York Herald assailed were quite will- 
ing to accept the title ; while the real leaders of the dynamite war, the 
educated and dignified representatives of a noble race, should by their 
advocacy of a principle to which they had committed the Irish National 
party have defended their action. This would have had an immense moral 
effect and elevated this subject to the proper position it should assume 
in the unhappy and strangled condition which Ireland finds herself in, 
trying to carry on the strife against her assassin. 

The American press, unknowingly writing upon these things, is left 
laboring under the impression that only a few men represent this dynamite 
policy, not thinking that the term dynamite fiend is only applicable to the 
assassins of the Basutos and the Irish, these slayers of women and babies, 
the English. The press still calls a small group of Irishmen by the above 
title, and then goes on to write up other Irishmen as believers in an opposite 
policy. If mankind loves the truth, and if the Irish cause is ever to be 
understood by liberty-loving American friends, it is time this misconcep- 
tion was stopped. The facts are the very opposite to what is so publicly 
taught. Irishmen themselves suffer severely for this. They are degrading 
what should be honored. Speaking with the immortal French republican 
we say : " Until the day when the great human concordat shall be con- 
cluded war, that at least which is the struggle of the hurrying future 
against the lingering past, may be necessary." What reproach can be 
brought against such war ? War becomes a shame, the sword becomes a 
dagger, only when it assassinates right, progress, reason, civilization, truth. 



49° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Then, civil war or foreign war, it is iniquitous; its name is crime. 
Outside of that holy thing justice, by what right does one form of war 
despise another ? By what right does the sword of Washington disown 
the pike of Camille Desmoulins, the Congreve hand-grenades of Robert 
Emmet, or the rifle of Peter O'Neill Crowley? By what right does the 
steel cruiser Vesuvius, armed with the powerful pneumatic gun and dis- 
charging the destructive dynamite shell of Zalinski, disown the smaller 
petard of William Mackey Lomasney ? Both represent nations: one great, 
powerful, and independent, which won that liberty by many a sanguinary 
struggle with the hirelings of George the Third. The prisons of New 
York were filled by her patriotic sons, doomed to the fetid atmosphere 
of the dungeon by English and renegade American Tories. The other, 
crushed, bleeding, but not vanquished, beseeching her sister nation for 
sympathy in the unequal struggle against the self-same tyrant nation, 
her gaping wounds eloquent in their mute appeal for a kindly word. 
What weapon that God's science can place in her manacled hands is she 
not entitled to use against her barbaric oppressor? Her war and her 
weapons are sacred. They are those of the great struggles of mankind in 
all ages. Leonidas against the foreigner, Timoleon against the tyrant — 
which is the greater? One is the defender, the other is the liberator. 
Shall we brand, without troubling ourselves with the object, every resort 
to arms in the interior of a city ? Thus mark with infamy Brutus, Marcel, 
Arnold of Blankenheim, Coligny, war of the thickets, war of the streets ? 
Why not ? It was the war Ambiorix fought against Rome, Artaveld 
against France, Marnix against Spain, Pelagius against the Moors, 
Emmet, Tone, and Fitzgerald against the British — all against the 
foreigner. Despotism violates the moral frontier as invasion violates the 
geographical frontier. To drive out the tyrant or to drive out the 
English is in either case to retake your territory. There comes an Jiour 
when protest no longer suffices. After philosophy there must be action. The 
strong hand finishes what the idea has planned. Prometheus Bound begins, 
Aristogeiton completes ; the Epcyclopedie enlightens souls, the 6th of 
May electrifies them. 

The multitude have a tendency to accept a master. Their mass 
deposits apathy. A mob easily totalizes itself into obedience. Men 
must be aroused, pushed, shocked by the very benefits of their deliver- 
ance, their eves wounded with the truth, light thrown in terrible hand- 
fuls. 

Whatever may be said as to the inertness of the Invincibles after the 
arrests of their comrades — as will be more fully written about — the rank 
and file were not to blame; they are to-day, as they have ever been, the foes 
of alien rule, and will continue to cherish the same hostile feeling toward 
the invader so long as the British flag flies in Ireland as an emblem 
of foreign conquest. This hostile feeling to foreigners will continue 
until what are darkly looming in the near future, emigration and poverty, 
depopulate the island. 

The police, detectives, and the machinery of alien rule had a white 
elephant on their hands in the person of James Carey. His protection was 
necessary to uphold British prestige. The English, no matter what their 
feelings toward Carey might be, knew that the duty of safely guarding him 
was imperative. All this time they were causing to be circulated every 
kind of imaginable slanders to try and disgrace revolutionary movements. 
They struck at the irrepressible Irish patriot through James Carey. It 
was noised through the press that Carey committed several murders and 
other crimes, which the Irish people, owing to the hatred with which he 
inspired them, were only too ready to believe, and they directed against 
his person their vengeful feelings instead of hurtling them on the 



DYNAMITE WAR IN ENGLAND. 49 l 

enemy. The death of his friends and comrades was left upon his 
head, and not where they rightly belonged — on that of the merciless in- 
vader. James Carey had been through life a thoroughly honorable man 
and a practical Irish Nationalist, and until he weakened in prison never 
did a dishonorable act. Had he been mated with a patriotic companion, 
his name to-day would not be stained by the cowardly treachery he 
fell into. Not a single spark of vengeance animated the breasts of 
the revolutionary court martial that sentenced him to death. A soldier 
who deserts to the enemy in time of war is always shot in the presence 
■of his comrades, if captured, no matter how valiant or honorable his pre- 
vious career. It is absolutely necessary to enforce discipline, and in 
Ireland's case it was most important to show Irishmen that no precaution 
on the part of the enemy could guard so notorious a traitor from swift 
and certain punishment. 

One who knew James Carey well, and who suffered the loss of all he 
had in life at his hands, thus describes him : 

" When first I knew James Carey he was an earnest and an honest 
man — honest in his earnestness for the cause he had espoused. He was 
in fairly good circumstances, and with his business knowledge, compara- 
tive youth, and energy might have accumulated wealth had he not 
become an ' Invincible'; and the slanderous tale of his having joined the 
patriots with the intention of betraying them is only that of men who 
have ever used such cant to excuse their cowardice in refusing to join 
anything practical. In the triumph of right, no matter by whatever means 
achieved, none would have triumphed more than Carey ; none hated 
England and her West British dogs with a hatred more intense than he. 
In the name of the great God who knows all hearts, let us think only of 
his sufferings and his ruin, let us extend to his memory only silence and 
charity, leaving with meekness his sins to his Saviour. His age was about 
thirty-seven. He was of medium height, well, but not heavily, built; lithe 
and active, with a liberal supply of faded brown hair, full beard and mus- 
tache, the latter covering his side mouth as do the down-hanging lips of 
an English mastiff." 

The Government of England decided on shipping Carey off to Africa. 
He was not consulted, nor indeed did he know what land they considered 
best for his safe keeping. The secret of his destination was learned, but 
a report also came from well-informed sources that they had changed 
their mind and that New Zealand was to be his home. Men who belonged 
to Dublin would be useless for the mission of pursuing him, as they 
would be easily known. A man, still living, volunteered to go to New 
Zealand, and was sent on the first part of his journey when information 
came that Cape Town was Carey's destination. Patrick O'Donnell took 
passage in the Kinfauns Castle, seeing no Irishman in any way con- 
nected with Irish politics in London. The tracking of Mrs. Carey and 
her family was easy, but among the many reports spread by the 
detectives with a purpose was one that Carey would not leave England 
with his family. The other reports were dismissed by men who were 
accustomed to sift such news, but this information was considered 
probable, and the course considered best to be taken was to communicate 
with a certain resident then in South Africa, and trace Mrs. Carey to her 
final destination. 

Carey, as is known, joined the Kinfauns Castle at Dartmouth. What 
transpired on the voyage out leaves it apparent that although Carey and 
O'Donnell were gooc friends, Carey was ever on the alert, for a fearful 
danger haunted him He was never alone with any one man. On 
arriving at Cape Tovn Carey, accompanied by two fellow-passengers, one 
called Williams and .he other who had received the sobriquet of " Scotty," 



49 2 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

went ashore. They entered the City Hotel, Waterkrant Street, for 
refreshments, when Carey commenced talking about Irish politics. He 
said the English were a people too base to live. If he had his way he 
would exterminate every one of them. " Ireland for the Irish, that's my 
motto." This nettled the Scotchman, so Scotty retorted, " What would 
you do with it ? Why, you would eat one another up." " Do you mean to 
say we are cannibals ? " shouted Carey in a violent passion, and his hand 
was on the throat of Scotty, who would have been choked but for 
Williams, who interfered. What Carey's object was in ventilating such 
opinions it is difficult to say ; perhaps he wanted to get on friendly 
terms with any Irishmen who would be in the colony ; but what is more 
probable they were his real feelings, which he could not repress. 

He himself and family changed at Cape Town to the Melrose, a vessel 
leaving for Natal and Durban. Patrick O'Donnell changed with him. 
O'Donnell paid the difference to go to Natal, Carey's destination. On 
Sunday, July 29, 1883, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, Carey 
and O'Donnell were together, this time alone. O'Donnell swiftly drew 
his revolver and shot Carey in the throat. When shot a fearful expres- 
sion crossed his face, and gurgling out, " O Maggie, I'm shot ! " he ran 
toward his wife's cabin, but was followed by O'Donnell, who shot him 
twice in the back. An eyewitness thus describes the scene : 

" I saw the last and fatal shot fired at Carey I was just thinking of 
having a sleep when the first shot was fired In common with the others 
I rushed to the spot just in time to see, to my intense astonishment, 
my friend O'Donnell following up and firing a last shot into the neck of my 
respectable and intelligent friend Mr. Power. I saw the latter [Carey] 
stagger and fall, while about the same moment O'Donnell was vigor- 
ously seized by several pair of hands, my own included, and made secure. 
For a moment I could not understand what had taken place ; but I shall 
never forget the look of wild horror and surprise which appeared on the 
face of the dying man as his wife and others bore him up." 

Carey was carried and placed upon a table in the cabin, where he 
expired. 

The Elizabeth Telegraph of August 4, 1883, thus describes Carey's 
funeral : 

" The interment of the remains of James Carey took place on 
Wednesday afternoon in the burial ground a few hundred yards in the 
rear of the north-end prison. The district surgeon, Dr. Ensor, was 
greatly distressed at the bare idea of 'the body being committed to the 
ground without any funeral service, and in consideration resolved to say 
a few words. The assistant magistrate, Mr. H. Halse, proceeded to the 
jail at three o'clock for the purpose of superintending the arrangements 
for sepulture. 

" Mr. Jones, the undertaker, arrived with the coffin at 3.45, and his 
assistant conveyed it to the mortuary. There lay the remains of James 
Carey ; the features appeared composed in death. The corpse was 
placed in the coffin, and the latter was conveyed to a vehicle outside, the dis- 
tance to the grave being nearly half a mile. Mrs. Carey and her children 
were in the jailer's quarters, and although efforts were made to dissuade 
her from following the remains of her deceased husband, she resolved on 
doing so, and with her baby and her son occupied the first cab, Dr. Ensor 
being in the second cab, and the assistant magistrate in the third cab. 
The cortege then slowly moved on to the grave, on the arriving at which 
the body was buried by the undertaker's men, eart. was thrown upon the 
coffin, and thus terminated the funeral obsequies 01 James Carey." 

In Dublin the unthinking element of the people burst into ecstasies 
of joy ; bonfires were burnt, and they seemed to thi, k it an occasion to- 



DYNAMITE WAR IN ENGLAND. 493 

make glad over. At best his taking off was a melancholy duty, a sad 
necessity ; the source of all the trouble still remains — foreign rule. 

The British press in Ireland and in Britain was very much dis- 
composed at the news. It felt that the Irish Invincibles had scored a 
point in the sanguinary struggle, that all Britain's power could not save 
their instrument's life. The correspondent of the London Times, writing 
from Dublin, thus comments on the event : 

"It is doubtful whether the authorities could have fully realized the 
responsibility which rested upon them as to the protection of Carey and 
the grave consequences likely to follow from the swift and signal ven- 
geance which his enemies have been enabled to take. The feelings 
excited by the unfortunate event among all loyal people are bitter dis- 
appointment and irritation at the failure to insure his safety, and deep 
concern at the effect upon the country. There can be little doubt that 
his assassination will restore the prestige of the secret conspirators, who 
it will be said are able to penetrate the secrets of the executive and 
frustrate their best laid plans. 

" Without the help of informers it is impossible to detect and punish 
crime in a country where the spirit of the multitude is hostile to the 
executive, and it was of the utmost importance to show that those who 
gave information to the Crown could rely upon its power to protect them." 

How frankly this British scribe admits that alien rule in Ireland 
cannot be carried on without the help of informers. United Ireland 
observes : 

" Most persons will agree that Mr. Carey did not in the end make 
much by betraying his comrades. 

" Even his employers will scarcely deny that it were better for him 
now to have been lying in the prison yard . . . than to be shot like a dog 
on a foreign shore. To be slain within two short months of the execution 
of his comrades is a poor reward for the treacheries of Green Street. As 
the English papers declare, the fate of Carey must strikingly illustrate the 
powerlessness of the state to offer to persons of this class any adequate 
inducements to come forward with their testimony." 

Patrick O'Donnell was cheered on landing a prisoner in Africa after 
the execution of Carey. The marvelous Irish race, which covers the 
globe with its patriotic love for the land of their sires, was to be found 
on the dark continent, with the same revengeful feelings against British 
rule in Ireland. When will a master mind arise to weave into one united 
bond this glorious national sentiment, not to parley with England, but to 
strike her everywhere and anyhow, until she surrenders back to the chil- 
dren of the Gael their plundered birthright — independence ? Patrick 
O'Donnell was brought before a magistrate in Cape Town, but the British 
feared he would not be convicted in the colony. As a rule, the Colonial 
English are more liberal in their ideas than those who dwell in their 
native land, and the Irish and Dutch element, which might get upon the 
jury, was in full sympathy with Patrick O'Donnell. England was deter- 
mined that O'Donnell should die, and the gentle Gladstone ordered 
his removal to London, where he knew he would have no trouble in hang- 
ing him with all the ceremonial of a trial before' and. 

Patrick O'Donnell was sent to England under a strong guard. Every 
precaution was taken to prevent the faintest chance at rescue: he was. 
guarded by a British Colonial company of soldiers while at Cape Town, and 
was well guarded on board H. M. S. Athenian, in which vessel he was sent 
back a prisoner. Mr. Gladstone's Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, 
communicated with the Portuguese Government, and they had a guard 



494 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

at Madeira a place of call en route to England. Soldiers lined the beach 
so that none of the dreaded Invincibles could communicate with the ship. 
The native boatmen were ordered not to go within hailing distance of the 
steamer. Mrs. Carey and her family returned by the Garth Castle. The 
same precautions were taken in her case. The shore at Funchal was pa- 
trolled by the Portuguese soldiery in a similar manner. The British 
thought that the Irish, like themselves, made war on women. The Athe- 
nian, with Patrick O'Donnell on board, arrived in Plymouth Sound on 
September 17, 1883, and, carefully guarded, he was brought to London, 
and imprisoned in Milbank convict prison. He was brought up at Bow 
Street police court, on Tuesday, September 19, and remanded for a week. 
The most extraordinary precautions were taken to keep him in safe cus- 
tody ; but the Irish crowds flocked round the court to cheer his going 
in and coming out — these crowds which the agitators always speak of 
as English workingmen when they want to score an imaginary vic- 
tory. Mrs. Carey and her family arrived safely in the Garth Castle on 
September 24. 

Patrick O'Donnell was not left undefended like Joseph Brady and his 
comrades. Everything that money could do in the way of procuring 
able and skillful counsel for the defense was done. This was princi- 
pally due to Mr. Patrick Ford of the Irish World, an Irish-American 
gentleman who has done many noble and generous acts for Ireland and 
in her behalf. He opened in the columns of his paper an O'Donnell 
defense fund. Mr. Finnerty of Chicago also simultaneously started a 
similar fund. The money poured in unstintingly ; the generous, warm- 
hearted Irish-Americans, to whom Ireland is indebted for many and 
countless favors, gave to this defense fund unsparingly. 

Mr. Ford has never been enrolled in the revolutionary ranks, yet he 
has performed for Irish revolutionists many kindly and generous acts. 
The British enemy, both in Parliament and in their journals, always speak 
of him as a "dynamiter." Nationalists are often forced to smile at the 
stupid blunders Englishmen make when they discuss Irish affairs in any 
manner. Mr. Ford kindly came to the aid of the families of the dead 
" Invincibles " by collecting and distributing money to them, so very 
much needed and so opportune at the time. Most Irishmen will fully 
indorse the principle upon which Mr. Ford acted with respect to the men 
who pleaded guilty; an Irish Nationalist who acts in this manner stultifies 
his principles, and b) implication casts odium on his comrades, giving 
England a moral victc ry. This should be specially condemned as treason. 
But at the same time it should be remembered the strain that these 
men must have endured, and the terrible mental torture they all had to 
suffer. Knowing full well that their leaders outside had weakened and 
deserted them in a dastardly manner, under the circumstances all should 
pity the weakness which yielded to the temptation of a shorter term of 
imprisonment. It is to be regretted that their families, who had no share 
in this weakness, were not looked to. It is sincerely hoped that the 
Dublin Nationalists have long since seen to their wants and necessities. 

General Roger A. Pryor, a leading American lawyer, and a firm and 
devoted friend to the cause of Irish independence, was engaged by Mr. 
Patrick Ford and sent over to see what could be done for Patrick 
O'Donnell. The Irish patriot knew that he was remembered by the Irish 
race the world over. General Pryor's hands were tied by his London 
colleagues. They were lawyers to the tips of their fingers, and could 
only look at this trial from a purely legal standpoint. Mr. Charles 
Russell, Q. C, since Mr. Gladstone's Attorney-General, and Mr. A. M. 
Sullivan, a lifelong Provincialist, were engaged for the defense ; both 
able and gifted lawyers. Patrick O'Donnell's counsel feared the preju- 



DYNAMITE WAR IN ENGLAND. 495 

dice which might be created in the minds of the English jury if General 
Pryor was permitted to plead for the defense, especially as his trial arose 
from what was simply an act of war against Britain ; for her prestige was 
struck down when Carey fell on board the Melrose. 

So that the principal reason for General Pryor's presence was lost. 
Had he been permitted to act as Irish Nationalists would wish, namely, 
to demand, as an act of courtesy, permission to defend an American 
citizen, the Gladstone Administration would have been compelled to 
have, by a refusal, placed on record a very discourteous precedent and 
have given a snub to the American bar. Or, if given permission to speak, 
General Pryor would have intelligently and sympathetically voiced the 
real feelings of Patrick O'Donnell's friends, and placed on record Irish- 
American opinion of the whole proceeding. As to prejudicing the jury,, 
that was already accomplished, both by Mr. Ford's public advocacy and 
General Pryor's presence. But after all is said, why take any part in these 
mummeries called trials? They really play into .the enemy's hands by 
the very fact of recognizing them as such by a defense. Patrick 
O'Donnell took his life in his hand. He executed on Carey's person 
the punishment due to treason, and being. unable to get a trial in Africa, 
as he expected, as a matter of course England would hang him. It is 
Irishmen's business not to waste their money on trials, but to carry on the 
war against the foe with redoubled vigor. 

The line of defense adopted by the lawyers was simply a diplomatic 
surrender to British interests, and was a weakening of the great prestige 
attached to O'Donnell's successful act, for this prestige enraged the 
British intensely. The O'Donnell lawyers tried to prove that Carey was 
killed by O'Donnell in a struggle, Carey having attempted the life of 
O'Donnell. If this defense was really true, then O'Donnell did nothing 
more than any man would do, namely, protect his own life, and there 
would be neither honor nor heroism about the matter, and England could 
not be blamed for being unable to guard Carey's life when he himself 
threw it away in a quarrel. The absurdity of this defense was too 
apparent to any intelligent man, for O'Donnell was not content with dis- 
abling his so-called opponent by firing one shot, but, with the unflinching 
resolution of the revolutionist, pursued the flying informer until he shot 
him dead. 

On Friday, November 30, 1883, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, the 
trial of Patrick O'Donnell commenced at the Old Bailey, London. Judge 
George Denman presided, and the Crown was represented by the Attor- 
ney-General, Sir Henry James, Messrs. Poland and Wright. In addition 
to the two able lawyers already mentioned, the prisoner had present on 
his behalf Mr. Mclnerney from Dublin, and General Roger A. Pryor 
from New York. Mr. Guy was the solicitor for the defense. Patrick 
O'Donnell, well guarded, was brought into court. He stood erect and 
boldly defiant, in all his natural dignity and his splendid physique, for 
the Donegal peasant was a man six feet in stature. The trial closed on 
Saturday evening. The jury, who appeared to give the case great atten- 
tion, came back to court three times to get fresh instructions from the 
judge. It is claimed that the last time the jury returned the judge's 
remarks were partisan and hostile to the prisoner, and decidedly unbe- 
coming the so-called purity of the ermine, but Irishmen have reason to 
know that this robe, as far as Irish political trials are concerned, is of a 
very inky blackness indeed. Most of the leading judges and lawyers of 
the American bar, in published interviews, condemned in strong language 
this Judge Denman's concluding words as very unjust and unfair, and 
highly unbecoming in a judge. But Irish Nationalists cannot see any- 
thing in these political trials but what is in perfect keeping with the 



496 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

peculiar war waging between the invaded Irish and their invaders, the 
British. When the jury retired for the last time General Pryor said 
to O'Donnell, " I fear they will find you guilty this time " ; to which 
O'Donnell responded, " 1 don't care a blank " ; and when the jury 
recorded their verdict he was the most unconcerned man in court. 
The brave soldier knew from the first his fate, and braced himself to 
endure it as became a Christian and an Irish patriot. General Pryor, 
afterward discussing this trial, said that he considered O'Donnell even 
a greater hero than Emmet, for one had all the advantages which a classic 
education and cultivated mind can bring to ennoble man in the hour of 
suffering, but O'Donnell was an untutored, unlettered Irish peasant ; yet 
he bore himself with the unassuming dignity which he displayed through 
the trial, a worthy representative of the holiest cause which man in all 
ages has ever offered up his life for — freedom for his native land. 
O'Donnell was determined to tell the judge in open court that he was 
an Irish Nationalist and was ready to die for his principles. He felt he 
was deprived unjustly of the right of speaking which the formula gives to 
a dying man. The British do not like these declarations of principles 
from the dock. They know that the propaganda from such a rostrum of 
Irish national doctrines has a very potent effect on the unconquerable 
Irish race. O'Donnell, enraged at being deliberately and cunningly 
deprived of the right of speech, shouted as he left the dock : " Three 
cheers for old Ireland ! Good-by, United States ! To hell with the 
British and the British Crown ! " 

He was sentenced to be hanged on Monday, December 10, 1883. 

Great exertions were made by Irish-Americans to try and get Patrick 
O'Donnell reprieved. On December 8 a deputation consisting of the 
following members of Congress waited on the President to induce the 
Executive to interfere : Messrs. Cox and Robinson (New York), Morri- 
son, Springer, and Finnerty (Illinois), Lefevre and Foran (Ohio), Murphy 
(Iowa), Mabury (Michigan), Lamb (Indiana), McAdoo (New Jersey), 
Collins (Massachusetts), and O'Neil and Burns (Missouri). President 
Arthur cabled to the American Minister, Mr. Low. About this time Mr. 
Hewitt, a member of Congress for New York, introduced and passed a 
motion in favor of the Executive taking action in the O'Donnell case, he 
being an American citizen. It has been said by good authority that Mr. 
Hewitt afterward waited on the British Minister in Washington, Mr. West, 
informing that gentleman there was no serious meaning in the resolution. 
England evidently thought so, for her Government declined to interfere. 

The Chicago Citizen thus comments on the O'Donnell case : 

"The result of the O'Donnell trial will be to make party violence 
henceforth reign supreme in Irish politics. The conviction of O'Donnell 
has ended forever in the Irish mind all hope of even ordinary justice from 
Englishmen. We will never again raise a cent to defend any Irishman 
before a British court, and never assist or advocate contributions unless 
for the purpose of striking terror into England. . . O'Donnell will 
doubtless hang, but the Irish race will not fail to avenge him. England 
shows no mercy ; let Ireland no longer show any." 

Mr. Finnerty has always taken a manly stand in Irish national politics. 
He is one of the few public men in America who has always had the 
courage of his convictions. The whole of this proceeding — this deputa- 
tion and attempt to save O'Donnell's life — while it was very noble as 
an act of mercy, fully reveals how imperfectly educated in Irish matters 
are the great mass of the Irish people here. Is it reasonable to expect 
that England would permit the man who so lowered her prestige in 
Ireland and before the world to escape the scaffold ? Some people 
see nothing in this bloody struggle on England's side to complain of» 



DYNAMITE WAR IN ENGLAND. 497 

If Irishmen are so silly as to think they can make war on England with 
impunity — and O'Donnell's act was a deliberate act of war — they are 
not of the material freemen spring from. Mr. Finnerty's paper tells us 
that O'Donnell's conviction has ended forever in the Irish mind all hope 
of even ordinary justice from Englishmen. A Nationalist would hope it 
has ; it is nearly time that these farces called trials of revolutionists 
were not participated in by Irishmen. If a lawyer of eminence is 
engaged to defend them, is this man not one of the enemy's men play- 
ing a part ? He is trying to save his client at the expense of the cause 
which his client has been identified with. The gentlemen who defended 
O'Donnell in trying to save his life were compelled to play into the 
British Government's hands, and many Irishmen were doing the very 
same. After Carey's death it was of the utmost importance for the 
British Government to impress, especially upon the Irish race, the fact 
that O'Donnell was not an emissary of any Irish revolutionary move- 
ment, and there is no doubt it has succeeded with a great many. All 
O'Donnell's friends were aiding it in trying" to recover this lost prestige. 
Numbers of Irishmen in America were unconsciously helping England's 
diplomacy in the course they were pursuing. Which is the life of the 
Irish nation or the life of a man the greater victory ? 

There was no chance for Patrick O'Donnell once England removed 
him from Africa. Until he arrived in England he knew it, for no doubt 
it had been impressed upon his mind. But when he reached England 
and found the number of legal gentlemen engaged to defend him, more 
especially the American lawyer, it is only natural that a new hope was 
temporarily implanted in his breast. It is right that men like O'Donnell 
should be impressed with the knowledge that they are not forgotten. 
This is most important, but it can be done without going through the 
hollow farce of defending a man who is captured by the enemy upon 
whose prestige and interests he is making war. By all means Nationalists 
will say with Mr. Finnerty, On with the war; they will not call it revenge, 
but rescue — not the rescue of a man or any number of men, but a nation. 
The alpha and omega of the whole quarrel, the cause which brought these 
men into danger and must bring others, is the fixed determination of the 
Irish nation to be free and independent. Irishmen waste their substance 
and their time defending Irish patriots captured by the foe as if they were 
were civil criminals guilty of an offense against society; and in trying to find 
some loophole in the enemy's laws to get one of their friends free, they 
sacrifice the principle which brought him into the toils. If the freedom 
of their imprisoned brothers is the one great aim in the national struggle, 
why commence the fight at all ? Then these men would not be in the toils. 
Irish Nationalists recognize that the men who were trying to get a respite 
for O'Donnell were the sincere lovers of Ireland and the true manhood 
of their race in America. Their devotion and ability in the service of Ire- 
land no one could for a moment question, but it is feared that they do not 
grasp the situation. So long as England flies her flag over Irish soil, so 
long must Irishmen expect at her hand what they call injustice, but which 
some people will not term-by any such phrase — it was simply the rough brute 
justice of war. She hangs Irishmen, and they remain supine. Instead of 
all this trouble, petitioning and complaining about O'Donnell's sentence, 
had Irishmen taken a lesson from their enemy in the same rough, brutal 
justice of war and sent some English spirits to accompany O'Donnell to 
the happy hunting grounds, they would be doing their duty as Irish 
soldiers fighting their country's enemy; and until they learn to strike! 
strike ! and never cease striking ! their enemy will despise their absurd 
attempts to right her either in her own courts, on the rostrum, or the 
political forum, unless the lessons preached in the dock of the first and on 



498 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the public platforms are to teach their countrymen that the sword of the 
revolutionist — that and that alone — can be their dying nation's salvation 
and only hope. 

Patrick O'Donnell was visited by his brother from the Donegal 
Mountains and by his wife from America. His brother Daniel could 
only speak the foreigner's tongue very imperfectly, so they conversed 
in their native language. As the English jailers did not understand 
the Irish tongue, they were able to converse on subjects that would 
not be permitted to an English-speaking prisoner. It is strange what 
an influence English literature has in misleading the world about Ire- 
land and Irishmen. Upon a recent occasion an Irishman had some 
business to transact with a prominent Russian, who, strange to say, 
learned for the first time that the Irish and English languages are totally 
distinct and dissimilar. And notwithstanding the laws which Britain 
made to destroy their language as well as their nationality, there are to-day 
parts of Ireland where the people do not understand a single word of 
English, and a visitor would require an interpreter if he did not under- 
stand the Irish language. Joyce, whose innocent life was taken during 
Gladstone's bloody regime in Ireland, did not understand a single word 
of the language he was tried in and found guilty of what he had no con- 
nection with whatever, and hanged in spite of every protestation from 
even West-British Irishmen to the merciless Liberal Government who 
withheld the fiat of mercy. 

Patrick O'Donnell was attended by Father Fleming in his spiritual 
exercises. He was most cheerful and resigned to his doom. He said to 
the good priest the 'day before his death : "I am quite ready to meet 
my fate. I have done my duty." Brother Irishmen, you who are left 
here for some wise purpose, let us hope, can you say, like the brave 
O'Donnell, that you are doing your duty? It is feared not. Let these 
men's deaths be a lesson to teach you what you are remiss in. On 
Monday morning, December 10, Patrick O'Donnell met his death. 
There was a crowd in the street looking for the black flag, the signal of 
death, but there were few Irish there. A London street was no place for 
them. They were praying for a dying brother and their dying nation. 
Opposite to the place of execution was his brother, Daniel O'Donnell, 
who gazed with tear-blinded eyes on the flagstaff that was to tell him his 
noble brother was no more. A few minutes and the dread signal was 
visible. The Donegal Irishman was utterly alone in the foreign capital, 
the metropolis of the people who have been killing his race for genera- 
tions. His heart tried to find consolation in his dead brother's senti- 
ments. He had done his duty. 

The next day Joseph Poole was hanged in Dublin for another political 
offense. Truly the "Grand Old Man" was keeping up his " battues of 
hangings," as William O'Brien termed them. 

Lord Mayor T. D. Sullivan recently (1887) proposed that Ireland 
should build a monument to Mr. Gladstone, and that it should be erected 
in Dublin. He convened a meeting in the Mansion House for that 
purpose, which meeting did not come off. 

By all means erect this statue, illustrious poet and agitator. Mr. 
Gladstone is your present leader. Let the site of this monument be in 
front of the Green Street court house, that bloody shambles where his 
officials sentenced to death so many noble Irishmen who were your 
countrymen before you crossed the portals of the British Commons, where 
you left your nationality. Place around the pedestal the names of his 
Irish victims, the Bellmullet women and the Ballina boys and the long 
list of Irish hanged. If you do this crimson roll justice he will have 
indeed a noble monument. It will tower far above Nelson's Pillar, and 



DYNAMITE WAR IN ENGLAND. 499 

will remain a goodly ornament to greet the eyes of his Irish Parliamentary 
following, who were once Irish patriots, or supposed to be. 

While Joseph Poole was lingering out his dying hours in Kilmainham 
jail, and Patrick O'Donnell was awaiting the coming day of doom, the Pro- 
vincialists chose this as a fitting time for revelry. They held a banquet to 
present a munificent sum of money to Mr. Parnell. 

Among the gentlemen who held high carnival this week of death can 
be read the names of Lord Mayor Dawson, who presided, Messrs. Davitt, 
• Sullivan, Sexton, O'Brien, Biggar, Gray, O'Connor, and Healy, and 
several other Irish Provincialists, and of course the guest of the evening, 
Mr. Charles S. Parnell. Lord Mayor Dawson made one of his usual 
graceful and telling speeches, and presented Mr. Parnell with a check 
for the trifling sum of ^38,000 ($190,000), a slight token of regard from 
the grateful Irish people for all the benefits (?) he had conferred upon 
them. Mr. Parnell, stimulated by the gratitude of his countrymen, made 
a most energetic speech. He told his hearers that Ireland was held in 
bondage by 30,000 soldiers and 15,000 police, which as yet were the 
slight obstacles to perfect freedom. He was succeeded by that great 
orator and self-sacrificing man upon whom the mantle of Lord Edward 
and Wolfe Tone has fallen, Ireland's beloved Mr. Michael Davitt, 
who responded to the toast " Ireland a nation," and painted in glow- 
ing language and beautiful imagery the splendid and magnificent 
career of Ireland a nation. The trifling obstacle of the 30,000 soldiers 
and 15,000 police did not count ; they were no sort of opposition in his 
path to freedom. Other speeches and songs followed, and the wine-cup 
encircled the Rotunda Hall. The revelry was at its height. They felt 
indeed that Ireland was " great, glorious, and free, first flower of the 
earth and first gem of the sea," and there is no doubt if these lines are 
repeated often enough, as a Buddhist does his prayers, they will serve as an 
invaluable and unfailing recipe to free nations with. The old-fashioned 
wicked way of making war is exploded, and these sesthetic changelings 
have indeed a respectable and sovereign remedy. Their hearts had 
expanded with the good things before them, and so they called on the 
world to rejoice with them. The following cable message was sent by 
the Lord Mayor of Dublin to the president of the National League at 
Chicago : 

" Twelve hundred Nationalists [?] in meeting here in honor of Parnell 
greet America and send thanks for her sympathy. Dawson." 

And the brainy and brilliant Irish-American to whom the message was 
sent replied as follows : 

" Irish-America salutes Ireland, re-echoes her cheers for Parnell, and 
will never cease struggling with her for liberty until it is achieved. 

" Alexander Sullivan." 

What a lot of fustian and sensational claptrap the whole thing reads 
to any practical man! The Lord Mayor thanks his Irish-American friend 
for this country's sympathy. They deserve sympathy, and need it, to hold 
a banquet near the halls of death ; to cheer while two Irish Nationalists 
were sleeping in the enemy's prisons, each in a condemned cell. It was 
thought at the time that Irish-America was striving to get Patrick 
O'Donnell reprieved. Some wicked men who said they represented Irish- 
America waited on the President with that object. These Irish-Ameri- 
cans were re-echoing no cheers for Parnell, but were in deep sympathy 
with O'Donnell, and the struggles for liberty mentioned in Mr. Sullivan's 



500 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

cablegram have been certainly carried out by sending well-filled purses 
to these changelings, which has been repeated again and again with over- 
flowing generosity. And the changelings are having Ireland freed by 
banquets and cheers, and repeating these successful formulas about the 
emerald gem. 

The great Spanish republican statesman, Senor Castelar, spoke thus of 
the execution of Carey : 

" No one is ignorant that the killing of Cavendish would never have 
been discovered but for the infamous denunciation brought by one Carey, 
who from accomplice and accused became Crown witness or accuser, or 
paid accuser. Such treason brought to the scaffold various patriots who 
are to-day adored as saints and martyrs by the simple faith of a people 
determined to recover their country's ancient independence. And if the 
people adore as saints those martyrs, imagine how they must abhor the 
denouncer. 

" All England failed to protect Carey from the execution of the verdict 
of the Irish nation. 

" On the morning when the criminal was least prepared the execu- 
tioner shot him dead — an exceptional punishment of an exceptional 
crime. . . 

" A race of such determination we must admit is invincible." 

Irishmen may vainly search the European press for any great states- 
man's approval of the Parnell banquet, and, unless the mutual admiration 
cabled across the water, there was none. The great statesmen of Europe, 
who are generally familiar with the inside and unknown diplomacy of 
European international politics, have long since estimated the full value 
of the agitation movement, with its banquets and its high-sounding, mean- 
ingless phrases, such as the recent "compound vengeance" threatened 
against England for the imprisonment of a prominent Irishman for the 
term of three months, and Mr. T. D. Sullivan's speech to the tenant 
farmers and laborers in Mayo, when he commenced with the high- 
sounding phrase, " Infantry and cavalry of Mayo." There are some 
Irishmen who think that this amiable gentleman would be paralyzed with 
fear if the " infantry and cavalry " had any more powerful weapons than 
blackthorns. He would be afraid they might commit " crime and out- 
rage," and if so he would expose himself to more serious punishment than 
two months in prison. Penal servitude and the scaffold may be very noble 
sentiments to write songs about. " High upon the gallows tree " may do 
very well as a martial chorus in a banquet hall, but it is quite another 
thing to face the cold reality of its presence on the scaffold. Patrick 
O'Donnell was about to face it with true manhood, and the class of Irish- 
men to which he belongs, are, in the words of Senor Castelar, invincible. 
But those changelings and weak Provincialists who heartlessly banqueted 
during the week of mourning preceding the death of these patriots are 
not the manner of men who will ever deliver their nation from foreign 
bondage. It is true ; and, alas ! it is true they are deceiving themselves, 
and are deluding the Irish people into the belief that their folly will be 
successful. 

Let Ireland remember the dying words of Patrick O'Donnell : 
*'I have done my duty." 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

(1884-85.) 

DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT — IRISH PROVINCIAL- 

ISTS* JUBILEE OVER THE DEFEAT OF GLADSTONE AND SPENCER 

" SUBORNERS OF RED-HANDED MURDER." 

The Dublin Scandals — "A Deeper Depth" — Libel Actions against William O'Brien — 
Exposure of Bolton, the Crown Solicitor — County Inspector French — Manufacturer 
of Perjurers — " Pleasant Particulars " — " Official Compounders of Felony " — " Inhab- 
itants of Sodom Respectable Compared with Spencer's Castle Gang of Scoundrels " — 
Mr. Parnell's Speech on Coercion — Exposure of Gladstone's Crimes Act — Persons 
Out after Sunset Arrested — Witnesses Examined Privately — Sent to Prison for an 
Indefinite Term — The Times on Parnell's Speech — The Atmosphere of the House — 
"The Stern and Silent Rebuke" — The Dublin Freeman Denounces Gladstone — 
" His Inaccurate Forecaste of the Future" — The Budget — Defeat of Gladstone's 
Government — The Irish Thirty-five — Great Rejoicings in Ireland — Rejoicings among 
Irish-Americans — It was a Famous Victory — " The Red Earl's Run" — "So Much 
for Buckingham " — " Burying the Proof of his Victims' Innocence in their Graves" — 
T. D. Sullivan, M. P., Denounces Gladstone and Spencer — The Tory Government — 
The Provincialists Hail the Tories with Joy — T. P. O'Connor's Views — Home Rule 
from the Tories — Its Passage through the Lords Assured — United Ireland on the 
Tories — " The Tories, Ireland's Natural Allies " — " The Irish Question is Settled " — 
Carnarvon and Parnell — Tory Promise of Home Rule — Parnell's Delusion — United 
Ireland on Gladstone — "Baiting the Trap" — Mr. Davitt and Mr. O'Brien Differ — 
O'Brien on the "Nobler Version" — "The Pure Young Man" — Davitt's Indigna- 
tion — Mr. Davitt and Mr. Finnerty — "Fraternization of Peoples" — Mr. Davitt 
Visits Rome — Tour to the Holy Land — Tory Promises — Banquet to Lord Spencer — 
John Bright's Speech — Banquet to Mr. Parnell — " It is Only a Question of How 
Muck Self-Government" — " I am Afraid we Cannot Call the English Masters in Ire- 
land " — " Can we Hurt England ? " 

In the early spring of 1884 United Ireland exposed an unspeak- 
able scandal attached to the British employees of Dublin Castle. The 
persons implicated in these unnatural orgies were the principal offi- 
cials engaged in getting up the Crown cases against the Irishmen who 
were recently hanged and sent to penal dungeons. The charges brought 
against these officials by Mr. William O'Brien's unearthing these infamous 
scandals ought to convince all fair-minded men what fearful wretches were 
the instruments of British torture in Ireland. George Bolton, the Crown 
and Treasury solicitor, who had the piecemealing and manufacturing of 
the testimony given at these mock trials, and who had the preparation of 
the briefs which instructed the prosecuting counsel on behalf of the 
Crown, was accused by United Ireland of being, in addition to his con- 
nection with these terrible scandals, both a forger and a thief; having 
embezzled certain funds committed to his care and having forged a will 
in his own favor. James Ellis French, county inspector of constabu- 
lary and chief of the country detective service, who had the management 
of the perjurers who gave evidence against Hynes, Joyce, and the various 
■other men arrested, outside of the Dublin prisoners, was also implicated in 
these infamous scandals. The head of the post office service in Ireland, 
an Englishman named Gustavus C. Cornwall, and a numerous retinue of 
Castle people, were also included. We cannot pollute these pages by more 
than alluding to these serious charges, which were substantiated in spite 
•of all the influence which the British executive used in trying to screen 

501 



5°2 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

their instruments. Both Gladstone and Spencer refused to believe these 
heinous offenses took place. 

George Bolton, Gustavus C. Cornwall, and J. E. French all instituted 
actions for libel, demanding damages from Mr. William O'Brien for what 
they termed his false charges made against them. The first action, that 
of James Ellis French, after several postponements owing to the absence 
of the plaintiff, who had not courage to follow up his suit, was withdrawn 
by French's solicitors. 

The United Ireland published a scathing article entitled "A Deeper 
Depth," accompanied by a cartoon depicting Earl Spencer and Mr. 
Trevelyan scourging Bolton, French, and Cornwall; underneath was 
printed the motto, "Flogging them to fight." The United Ireland in the 
course of its remarks observed: "Earl Spencer by fair means compels the 
foulest scoundrels in the Castle service, under pain of losing their salaries, 
to crush the obnoxious paper by the legal battering ram of forty thousand 
pounds' damages." 

These lines, quoted from the leading organ of the Provincialists, prove 
at a glance how little these men seem to see the situation; the real situation 
of Ireland appears to be as far removed from their vision as is the planet 
Saturn, and yet these men are the guides, philosophers, and friends of the 
people at home. This paper, which has been most unstinting in its 
exposure of the bloody regime of Spencer in Ireland, and which plainly 
and emphatically denounced in the strongest language his brutal and 
despotic acts, yet refuses to see that Ireland is governed by a foreign 
despotism that works its own will and pleasure in the country. The 
writer, Mr. William O'Brien or someone expressing his views, still clings 
to the delusion that Ireland is constitutionally governed. Mr. O'Brien 
seems strangely blinded to the real facts, and still stumbles on under 
the extraordinary idea that his paper and himself are in a measure pro- 
tected by British constitutional guarantees — guarantees which only exist 
in the imagination of himself and his colleagues. The events and every- 
day occurrences of Mr. Gladstone's then term of office, and which have 
been continued since by the Tories, should be proof to any thinking mind 
that in Ireland these guarantees are an absolute fallacy. 

If United Ireland was in any way "obnoxious" to the powers that be 
Lord Spencer or Mr. Trevelyan would not need any "legal battering 
ram" to squelch it. All they would have to do would be to issue a 
proclamation and suppress and seize the paper as they did a short time 
previous, an action which cost the Parnellites a considerable sum of money 
in trying to secretly print and circulate the paper. They succeeded at a 
great financial loss; what with the seizure at Dover of the French printed 
issue and other losses, it would have taken a large yearly income to keep 
it going. No change in the government of Ireland had taken place that 
would stay Lord Spencer from the former acts of the same administration, 
if it suited his policy. 

Mr. O'Brien and his friends make a serious blunder when they ventilate 
such absurd statements, and thus spread broadcast the false teaching 
which is deceiving the Irish race at home and in other countries. The 
real reasons why United Ireland and kindred journals are permitted 
is that they are very serviceable to English rule, and act as a buffer, 
misleading the people, let us hope unintentionally — keeping their eyes 
fixed on an ignis fatuus to which they give the patriotic name of "Home 
Rule" ; and they are also a buffer between the real patriots and the British 
enemy. It was to do this duty for England that Mr. Parnell was 
requested by Mr. Gladstone to resume his position as Irish national leader 
and continue in public life. It was this necessity to have a safety valve 
to blow off the intense Irish hatred of foreign rule which animated that 



DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT. 503 

skillful chess player, the Liberal British Minister, and it was the knowledge 
that the Minister held no such terrible views of his (Mr. Parnell's) associa- 
tion with what is termed in English parlance "crime and outrage" that 
induced Mr. Parnell to forego his original intention when he visited his 
quondam friend and companion, the illustrious (?) Captain O'Shea. So that 
it is not at all likely that Earl Spencer interfered; neither did his confede- 
rate in the Irish government whom the agitators gave the euphonic title of 
""Pinch of back hunger Trevelyan," but who to-day occupies the sanctum 
sanctorum of the "Home Rule" chamber. The necessities of these Castle 
officials' position, salaries, and other considerations compelled them to try 
and show fight, until they found that Mr. O'Brien was acting from positive 
information supplied to him by one of the police officers thoroughly 
•cognizant of the infamy of his surroundings. Earl Spencer and his master 
Mr. Gladstone threw all the official shield they could about some of 
these men, for state reasons only. They did not wish to discredit their 
•administration by prosecuting these infamous tools which brought so 
many patriotic Irishmen to the gallows, and did not wish to be the agents 
of exposing the iniquitous conduct of these vile instruments of theirs. 
They knew that any attack coming from United Ireland would not be 
credited in influential circles, and it made no difference among the Irish 
people, who were being gradually brought to that state of mind by its 
teachings suitable for British routine to destroy them peacefully without 
any extra excitement. 

Irishmen, if they give this subject proper thought, will realize how 
unconsciously the agitators were playing the British game by their protes- 
tations against unconstitutional methods where no constitution exists. 
The only means by which the invader could be. injured were condemned by 
men who carry with them a certain amount of weight because of their 
so-called national proclivities. Some of these men no doubt are influenced 
by admirable though mistaken motives. The British found it necessary 
to aid their instruments, so the Castle machinery was set in motion, and a 
convenient packed jury of Castle followers were procured to try the libel 
suit against Mr. O'Brien. But even these jurors, in the face of the over- 
whelming testimony, did not think it right to give substantial damages to 
Cornwall. Still their verdict for nominal damages mulcted Mr. O'Brien 
with legal expenses, which included both Cornwall's and his own. What a 
■satire on so-called British justice in Ireland ! In this case Mr. O'Brien had 
no alternative but to appear in court; he had a principle to defend, to prove 
that the serious charges made in United Ireland were substantial facts, all 
of which he did without one flaw or break. Of course his case was pre- 
judged by the packed jury, and so he had to accept the financial loss as 
best he could. However, the generous Irish people came to his rescue 
under the impression it was sustaining Irish freedom in some measure. 
They started one of these perennial defense funds, which recouped the 
Irish National Publishing Co., leaving a handsome margin of two thousand 
pounds. Mr. O'Brien, unlike some of his associates^ is most self-denying 
in financial matters. He would not retain any of this money for his own 
use; he gave one thousand pounds to some deserving purpose as he con- 
sidered it, and gave one thousand pounds to a Provincialist lawyer, who 
is one of Ireland's new saviors, and defender in chief in the British 
•courts for the Parnellites and the League. Who would not be an Irish 
Provincial lawyer spouting mock nationality which will never draw 
■severe punishment from the enemy, when such nice fat fees are to be had 
now and then? During the whole of this agitation, from the inception of 
the "crusade of shame" to the present hour, there has been a lawsuit or 
prosecution going on continually ; who so proper to earn money by 
•defending these as Home Rule lawyers — which accounts for so many 



504 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

of the Irish members of the British Parliament seeking a call to the 
English bar in Ireland, and adding an additional binding link to that 
which already holds them in the service of the British Crown. The expose 
of the Castle officials could not be altogether passed over. British rule in 
Ireland had to assume a virtue if it had it not. The blind worshipers 
of everything British could not allow it to be stated that their private lives 
were not as pure as the Irish whom they were crushing. Criminal proceed- 
ings were instituted against the Castle gang. French was conveniently 
proven to be a lunatic, some received imprisonment, one man penal servitude, 
but many through the packed juries disagreeing (none were proven not 
guilty) were relegated into retirement, and the Liberal rulers commenced 
anew their sanctimonious rule of Castle conspiracy against Ireland. 

Those who now peruse United Ireland can see in every number the 
way it writes up the English alliance of Gladstone, Spencer & Co., and will 
be able to refresh their memory by the windmill politics which Mr. O'Brien 
teaches Irishmen who read this organ. Writing on these Dublin scandals 
United Ireland had the following editorials. March 1, 1884, under 
the heading of "Pleasant Particulars": "We have just had the satisfac- 
tion of furnishing Lord Spencer's esteemed detective director James Ellis 
French with the particulars demanded by that official as ordered by his 
allies of the Court of Queen's Bench. . . A copy is also at the disposal of 
Lord Spencer whenever he chooses to call for it at this office, and in the 
interests of public decency it would perhaps be as well if his Excellency 
would no longer feign ignorance of the class of ruffians retained by him 
on the plunder of the tax-payers. In our opinion the inhabitants of 
Sodom were respectable members of society compared with some of the 
scoundrels employed by her Most Gracious Majesty to govern Ireland 
from Dublin Castle. Let Lord Spencer turn to the affidavits and say 
whether the public, who regard the Castle as a den of tyranny, will not 
henceforth be justified in deeming it a sink of iniquity as well. Why, if 
he be not in league with French, does his Excellency not compel the 
wretch to press forward his prosecution against us? Whose fault 
is this? . . Surely, however, the Lord Lieutenant will not tolerate 
that the case of French v. O'Brien should sink out of sight as 
a dropped order. We now challenge him, with all and sundry other of 
French's bottle holders, to pick up their man and send him to us if they 
dare." In the issue of May 24, 1884, under the heading of "Official 
Compounders of Felony, " it says: "Mr. Trevelyan has now confessed 
that Colonel Bruce and himself, and doubtless Earl Spencer, inquired as 
to French's abominations and had ample prima facie evidence that the 
charges against him were true, but determined to observe a benevolent 
neutrality toward the gentleman because (at their instigation) he had 
brought an action for libel against this journal. Was there ever an admis- 
sion that so completely identified the Irish Government as accessories 
after the fact to a nameless crime?" 

The editorials from United Ireland ought to be convincing proof that 
there is no genuine and steadfast nationality in agitators who are swayed 
by every breath of wind that stirs up British politics. Think of the man 
who penned these articles associating and in alliance with Lord Spencer 
and Mr. Trevelyan, against whom, no doubt truthfully, he brought this 
infamous and horrible charge. Think of men who call themselves 
Nationalists sitting down to dinner with Lord Spencer, against whom they 
brought such horrid accusations. It is simply monstrous. The credulity 
of the Irish people in believing any set of men can be sincere Irish 
patriots who practice such inconsistencies is, to say the least, astounding. 
Mr. Parnell exposes Mr. Gladstone's coercion and then creates him his 
chief, and he is hailed as Ireland's deliverer. 



DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT. 505 

In the debate on Gladstone's Coercion Bill Mr. Parnell, speaking in 
the British Parliament, said: Public opinion in this country generally 
seemed to forget that it was an act of the most drastic severity that had ever 
been passed against Ireland. The Right Honorable gentleman the Chief 
Secretary [Mr. Trevelyan] said "No, no!" but if they compared the pro- 
visions of the Crimes Act with the provisions of other coercion acts, they 
would find the former were more sweeping and numerous than those of 
any Crimes Act that had been passed. They had power under the Crimes 
Act to establish a special commission of judges for trial without jury 
for certain offenses, power for trial by special juries selected from the 
county and city panels, with unlimited right of the Crown to order jury- 
men to stand aside and giving unlimited right of challenge — a power 
which has resulted in the selection of juries for the trial of the gravest 
offenses from the very class who were smarting in pocket, in prestige, 
and in reputation from the result of the Land League agitation and from 
the result of the legislation of the Government, and who were unable' to 
approach the consideration of those grave political and agrarian cases 
which were brought before them with that judicial form of mind which 
it was imperatively necessary for jurors to have. 

They had provisions in the Crimes Act for the appointment of tribunals 
of summary jurisdiction, and. intimidation was defined in such a way as 
to render it impossible for a speaker to address any meeting without 
breaking the law unless he had a lawyer by his side to tell him what to 
say (Hear). 

Power was given to the police to arrest persons after sunset, which, as 
he should show, had been very extensively used. 

Power was also given to arrest strangers, to seize newspapers, and to 
make searches by day or night. 

There was power given to the justices to summon witnesses, and to 
examine t/iem privately, and to commit them to prison without trial for an 
indefinite term. 

The jury to try Francis Hynes were almost exclusively composed of 
persons drawn from the class of the Castle tradesmen, or persons depend- 
ing upon the aristocracy for their livelihood, or persons on terms of 
friendly intimacy and companionship with Lord Spencer and the Castle 
officials. 

What an expose 1 'of the Grand Old Man's rule in Ireland. This was 
the change which Irishmen hailed when Forster resigned; and which, 
Heaven help the race! they also cheered as a victory. This descrip- 
tion of Mr. Gladstone's Crimes Act is accurate and ought to show up 
the hypocrisy of this amiable Englishman when for personal ambition 
and party purposes he chose to denounce a less drastic — but yet infamous 
— Crimes Act introduced by his English political opponents, the Tories. 
What a shuttlecock Ireland permits herself to be made by this brace of 
tyrants, the Liberals and Tories of Britain. For any removal of these 
tyrannies Mr. Parnell was exposing he might as well have been address- 
ing the waves on the seashore. He would find the angry inflowing tide 
of oppression as unchanging in its order as Canute found the sea when 
he wished to teach his courtiers a lesson. Mr. Parnell was addressing a 
foreign legislature, and appealing to the public opinion of a foreign and 
hostile people, whose interests and opinions were and are antagonistic to 
the well-being of the Irish race. 

What should be strongly condemned in all these agitators, who have 
stirred up Irish wrath only to compel it to remain quiescent as to action, 
is that they profess to be content with the exposure of these wrongs, and 
think such exposure of itself sufficient. But to practically try and remove 
them by deeds they, like the dog in the manger, will neither do them- 



506 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

selves nor, if possible, allow their countrymen to do. So practically they 
are doing England's work while abusing her, teaching Irishmen that 
exposure and abuse are the needed weapons, coupled with a vague imple- 
ment of warfare called public opinion. They are wasting the national 
treasury in their impossible, and for any nation to adopt impracticable, 
course. Ireland alone among the nations has ever tried to combat their 
enemy by the use of that enemy's laws. In any other country a group of 
men who would attempt such a thing as trying to free their land by argu- 
ing with the foreign invader would be scouted out of public life, and 
laughed at as a set of drivelers by their own countrymen. 

The effect of the atmosphere of the British Parliament on Irishmen 
has been repeatedly mentioned before. Even the British people and 
press notice this. The London Times thus comments on Mr. Parnell's 
speech: 

"Nevertheless even Mr. Parnell could not altogether escape from the 
influence of the usual atmosphere of the House. 

"The stern and silent rebuke of his reception so far daunted him that, 
as the Attorney-General for Ireland remarked, he did not venture to 
recite to the House the more scandalous and offensive parts of the 
amendment he had placed upon the paper." 

Mr. Gladstone in a public utterance tried to excuse himself for the 
state of Ireland, and as a matter of course attached all blame to his pre- 
decessors the Tories. He was too busily engaged in the affairs of the 
Bulgarians to think of the Irish. This practically was his own confession. 
He, good, angelic man, the great patriarch Cadsby Gladstone, whose 
venerable locks wave round features that look so benevolent now in Irish 
eyes — he of course was not to blame ; it was those wicked, cruel Tories. 
The Dublin Freeman, Mr. Gladstone's great Irish admirer, commenting 
upon this speech of the English Minister's, felt compelled to condemn and 
reprove its dear friend "Achilles," and thus criticises him: 

"Mr. Gladstone's description of Lord Salisbury's interpretation of 
former Liberal declarations is strictly and literally applicable to the 
Premier's own recapitulation of recent Irish history. That recapitulation 
is a pure and perfect work of the fertile imagination of the Premier. 
So inaccurate and so absolutely untrue a statement of facts, which should be 
fresh in the memory of every man pretending to a smattering of political 
knowledge, we never yet knew made by a responsible statesman speaking 
on a great political occasion. It is simply amazing that in order to catch 
a passing cheer Mr. Gladstone could have brought himself to make such 
recklessly inaccurate assertions, which he ought to have known would not 
have been allowed to pass unchallenged for one single day. It was a 
humiliating confession for the Premier gratuitously to make that, at the 
time he was assailing the position of Lord Beaconsfield and seeking to 
supplant him he, the statesman of all others who was supposed to have 
made the Irish question his own, was so engrossed with the Bulgarian 
atrocities, so anxious to secure the eviction, bag and baggage, from Europe 
of the unspeakable Turk, that he did not know — we quote his own 
words — 'the severity of the crisis that was already swelling upon the 
horizon in Ireland, and that shortly after rushed upon us like a flood.' 
Mr. Gladstone is no more accurate in his forecast of the future than in his 
retrospect of the immediate past. His prophecies with regard to the 
National party need not seriously disquiet them. 

" Those who witnessed the strained and eager anxiety with which, on 
more than one critical occasion within the last twelve months, he watched 
to see into which lobby the little phalanx of Irish members would walk, 
will be inclined to think that his indifference to an occasional overturning of 
a ministry, not to say the dissolution of Parliament, is a trifle overdrawn." 



DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT. 507 

The Freeman, even in its condemnation of the British Premier, must 
preach to the Irish people the eternal doctrine of looking to the Prime 
Minister of the British enemy in Ireland as the Moses who was destined 
to lead the Irish nation out of the house of bondage. Why should the 
chief of Ireland's invaders and destroyers be the person who should be 
expected " to be the statesman of all others who was supposed to have 
made the Irish question his own " ? Are Irishmen so incapable and crushed 
as a people that they need a British Minister to make their question his 
own ? He of all others whose race and nation have been persecuting the 
Irish for seven long centuries ! He who then held full despotic power 
which he was using with every engine of tyranny to oppress them — yea, 
•at the very hour this article was written — and this Dublin newspaper, sup- 
posed to be National, seeks the camp of their foe and reproaches their 
chief for not acting up to their expectations and making Ireland's troubles 
caused by his people his own. Such a monstrous expectation! Why, to do 
so, he would be a renegade and traitor to his own nation. It is the very 
life-blood of their commercial and political existence that Ireland be held 
in bondage and not permitted the free use of her limbs, and no British 
statesman, unless at the point of the sword — as Washington compelled 
them here — will ever surrender to Ireland the control of her own affairs. 
Gladstone never offered to do so, neither will he nor any other British Minis- 
ter dream of such a thing unless under the dread alternative already 
spoken of. Oh, Ireland ! Ireland ! how steeped in the sink of degradation 
these scribes and agitators would keep you ! That it is not from among 
your own people or race your deliverer must spring, but in the very camp 
of your bitter enemy ! From the ranks of your foeman your chief, forsooth, 
must come. What has this Englishman, Gladstone, done that he should 
be so spoken of ? He has never passed one single measure — not one — that 
has given to the Irish people the slightest control over their national 
life. Not one law has ever been framed that has in the slightest manner 
stayed the dry rot which is hastening that suffering nation to decay and 
death. Any assertions to the contrary, in the words of the Freeman, are 
4 ' recklessly inaccurate assertions" which cannot be sustained. This look- 
ing to England for help has been Ireland's curse and her abasement. 
You have no hope, Irishmen, but in being able to compel the unspeakable 
Briton to leave your island bag and baggage. This British Minister Glad- 
stone has been even to these Irish agitators hypocritical ; in the words of 
the Psalmist: " He hath put forth his hands against such as be at peace with 
him ; he hath broken his covenant ; the words of his mouth were smoother 
than butter, but war was in his heart ; his words were softer than oil, yet, 
were they drawn swords." 

As the Irish people are now hoping (1887) with an anxious hope for 
the return of the "grand old man" to power, so at this time, mid- 
summer, 1885, they were eagerly praying for the downfall of him whom 
they then termed "Judas Gladstone." Such has been the effect of legal 
and moral agitation upon the people that they appear to eagerly welcome 
a new tyrant, so as to rid themselves of the despot in office. And yet 
there is no real, but an imaginary change which takes place in Ireland. 
The selfsame destructive rule of the foreigner flows on as unchang- 
ing as the rivers rush to the sea. The much prayed for opportunity 
came to the Irish Parliamentary party. Certain provisions in Mr. 
Gladstone's budget were disapproved of by a large section of his own 
countrymen, and on Monday, June 8, 1885, the Liberal Government 
was defeated. The vote for the second reading of the Budget Bill was 
252 against 264, leaving the ministry in the minority by 12 votes. The 
thirty-five Irish Parliamentary votes were recorded against Mr. Glad- 
stone's administration. Great was the joy in the Irish Parliamentary 



508 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

ranks, and which not only spread over Ireland, but wherever Irishmen 
dwelt. Here in America, their countrymen were as enthusiastic as they 
were at home. Had British rule in Ireland been blotted out of existence, 
there could scarcely have been more joy expressed than there was at the 
downfall of the minister who to-day is their idol and their chief. Strange 
effect of false political teaching on a truly national and patriotic race ! 
The Irish Provincial journals at home and here in America were brim- 
ful of enthusiasm and delight at what all called a great Irish victory. 
Here was positive proof of the potency of Parliamentary warfare, where 
a most powerful British Ministry was struck down by the Irish vote. Had 
the Irish members voted with Mr. Gladstone, he would have had a 
majority of fifty-eight, or had they refrained from voting altogether the 
Ministry would have had a majority of twenty-three votes more than 
sufficient to keep them in power. And this was a clear demonstration of 
what a great factor in serving the Irish national cause and compelling 
ministers to listen to Ireland's demands was the Irish Parliamentary 
party under the leadership of Mr. Parnell. Thus reasoned the agitators ; 
and on the strength of this great victory for Ireland, they began to draw 
rosy pictures of Ireland's future, all to be won by legal and moral agita- 
tion. They never stopped to think that had the 62 followers of Mr. 
Gladstone who absented themselves, and the 8 who voted against his 
budget scheme, voted with their party, " the Grand Old Man " would have 
had a majority of 68, in spite of their 35 votes recorded against him. 
These 70 dissatisfied British Liberals did not count. It was all the 
great victory of the Irish 35. Neither did they in their exultation take 
into consideration the 229 British Tories who voted with them. No, the 
whole honors rested on their Parliamentary shoulders. It was no lessen- 
ing in any way to their great victory. There had been a new franchise 
bill enacted, and Lord Salisbury and Mr. Gladstone had settled a com- 
promise scheme of Parliamentary seat redistribution which was passed 
into law, and necessitated a dissolution of Parliament in the autumn, to 
be followed by a general election. This fact made not the slightest 
difference, and they exclaimed, like the Iron Duke, when years after the 
battle he revisited the field of Waterloo, " It was a famous victory," and 
as Mr. Gladstone could not have been defeated at the time without their 
voting against him or absenting themselves from the division, we will, 
after mentioning these slight drawbacks, most ungrudgingly accord to 
them the laurels of victory. And after joining in the universal shout 
of joy, we will ask in a natural manner, Gentlemen, where are the fruits 
of your triumph? They are not visible, neither can they be imagined. 
These Parliamentary contests have been ever barren of results to Ireland, 
and this particular Irish victory was no exception to the general rule. 

The joy in Ireland was fanned into a blaze of enthusiasm by the 
Provincial press. United Ireland published one of its famous cartoons in 
brilliant colors. It depicted Lord Spencer running swiftly away, pursued 
by the shades of his murdered victims, who, clothed in graveyard cerements, 
pointed before them with outstretched arms and bony fingers. There 
was a villainous scowl on the Lord Deputy's face, and the fiery red of 
his hair and whiskers added to the ferocity of the countenance depicted 
by the artist. Around his neck was coiled a hangman's rope, and in his 
hand he carried a satchel on which was labeled " Crimes Act." Under- 
neath was the legend " The Red Earl's Run." 

The editorial which accompanied this celebrated picture was in no 
manner less emphatic in its condemnation of the Liberal regime of blood 
in Ireland, and had the characteristic title : " So Much for Buckingham." 

The editorial observed : " Earl Spencer has gone the way of Mr. 
Forster and Mr. Trevelyan. He came in and went out with the Crimes 



DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT. $°9 

Act. He staked his all upon cowing Irish spirit, and strangling Irish 
organization with that bloody instrument. He stopped at nothing, not at 
secret torture, not at subsidizing red-handed murderers, not at knighting 
jury packers, not at police quarterings, blood taxes, the bludgeoning of 
peaceful meetings, the clapping of handcuffs and convict jackets on mem- 
bers of Parliament, mayors, and editors, not at wholesale batches of hangings 
and transportations by hook or crook, not at burying the proofs of his 
victims' 1 innocence in their graves." 

No language used by revolutionists to characterize the regime of 
Gladstone's second agent in Ireland can be found stronger than this 
used in Mr. William O'Brien's paper, the leading organ of the Irish 
agitators, and which is a truthful resume of that atrocious time. And 
to-day Irishmen are told to look for the salvation of their country from 
the men who procured " wholesale batches of hangings." What short 
memories have these agitators ! 

The writer in United Ireland, the mouthpiece of the Irish party, speaks 
the plain truth when he states : " Earl Spencer came in and went out 
with the Crimes Act." But how can the agitators reconcile this state- 
ment with the opening lines of a certain proclamation posted in Dublin, 
•two days after the " Red Earl " landed in Ireland, signed by some of the 
leaders of the Irish Parliamentary party, which began thus: " On the eve 
of what seemed a bright future for our country " ? Was the coming of 
this English Lord Deputy "the bright future " which these men hailed ? 
Was this Earl Spencer the promise and fulfillment of " bright hopes " 
which they taught the whole Irish race to shout for as a great victory ? 
Read again the terrible charge these men's official organ brings against 
Lord Spencer : He " stopped not at burying the proofs of his victims' inno- 
cence in their graves.'" And this man, Earl Spencer, was the Apostle 
of the great Irish victory gained by the departure of Forster, and 
whom they themselves charge with greater crimes than even the 
man called " Buckshot Forster " committed. Since this powerful article 
was written, accompanied by its cartoon called the "Red Earl's Run," 
the sentiments of which were also endorsed by the other Irish journals, 
two of the most honored of these Irish members dined with Lord 
Spencer. Did they feel as they touched his hand that it was stained 
with the blood of his innocent victims ? Did they shudder when they 
sat at the table with the man whom their official organ called by implica- 
tion such a terrible name ? * 

On Tuesday, June 16, 1885, the Dublin National League held its 
usual meeting nine days after the defeat of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. T. D. 
Sullivan of the Dublin Nation (the author of many stirring and spirited 
ballads) was in the chair. The defeat of the brutal Liberal Minister was 
a subject of great congratulation among the leading National agitators ; 
it was hailed as a victory for Ireland, as the next advent to power of this 
very same brutal coercionist will be regarded as another omen of victory. 
What monstrous delusions and deceits are practiced upon the credulous 

* Since this history was written, the march of events has shown the Provincialist 
leaders to have fallen away from their early hostility to British rule. Mr. Wm. O'Brien, 
who speaks in such scathing language of Mr. Gladstone's Irish Lord Lieutenant, Earl 
Spencer, in the above editorial, thus addresses himself to a Birmingham audience, March 
17, 1888 : " My memory does remind and does rebuke me for having said harsh things, 
much more harsh and cruel things than were ever said of Mr. Bright, of another great 
Englishman — Earl Spencer (loud cheers). And Earl Spencer has taken the noblest ven- 
geance that ever fell to the lot of man (cheers). For my part I have never cringed to 
mortal man (cheers) . . . but I tell you candidly from what I have seen of Earl Spencer, 
from what I have known of Earl Spencer's career since he quitted Ireland, I would 
black the boots OF such A man (cheers) — and I would think it no dishonor (cheers)." 

Compare this language not only with the article " So much for Buckingham," but with. 



J> to THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Irish masses to keep them from uniting upon the only course left a bleed- 
ing nation. Mr. Sullivan, in the course of his remarks, used the following 
words, speaking of the foreign ministers sent to govern Ireland : " They 
came here one after another for the purpose of suppressing the spirit of 
the Irish people and destroying the nationality of the country, and they 
had to go away beaten and defeated men while Irishmen lived and 
flourished. On no occasion had the people better reason to rejoice than 
they had to-day, for two reasons. One was that hardly ever had a more 
bitter and determined enemy of this country come to it and left it than 
was about to leave it in the person of Earl Spencer ; and hardly ever did 
an Irish meeting assemble on an occasion of this sort with brighter 
prospects before it, as far as the rights and liberties of the Irish people 
were concerned, than were before them to-day." 

See how this agitator hugs the delusion to his soul that the enemy's 
Viceroy was leaving the country beaten, when he knew that another would 
succeed him. What is it to Irishmen whether their chains are called 
Liberal or Tory ? They gall the same and clang just, as loud in the ears 
of slaves. Foreign rule is a hideous crime toward Ireland, no matter 
which wing of the assassins orders the slaughter. Spencer was not leaving 
Ireland beaten ; he had left behind a rosary of corpses for this pious* 
agitator to pray around, as his brother agitator, Mr. O'Brien, puts it, 
burying the proofs of his victims' innocence in their graves. Note how 
he tells his credulous hearers that Ireland's prospects were never brighter. 
What are the prospects this would-be patriot speaks of as bringing hope 
of brightness to Irishmen's rights and liberties? The coming of Lord 
Carnarvon and Hart Dyke, two Tories, to replace Lord Spencer and 
Trevelyan. What an insulting prophecy — what a falsehood, whether 
believed in by its utterer or not, to tell to the Irish people that the coming 
of Carnarvon was an occasion for rejoicing, the Englishman who deluded 
Mr. Parnell with the hypocritical promise of Home Rule ! And when 
Irishmen remember that this same Mr. T. D. Sullivan, who denounced 
Spencer as the most bitter and determined enemy of Ireland, actually 
took his bloodstained hand and sat down to dinner with him, Irishmen 
should stand aghast with horror. Heaven, where are thy thunderbolts 
to hurl upon these men — renegades to nationality and honor, who would 
try and drag their suffering motherland into the abyss of degradation 
and infamy ! Who take the criminal's hands, shutting their eyes upon 
the crime ; who eat with assassins, as they themselves, accused this 
Englishman of being ! And yet would slander the memories of the purest 
patriots that ever died 'neath God's glorious sunlight for the redemption 
of their nation from foreign slavery ! 

The effect of the vote in the budget was the resignation of the Liberal 
Premier and the formation of a Tory Ministry under the leadership of Lord 
Salisbury. Thus, after five years of the most tyrannic system of govern- 
ment known in Ireland during the present century, fell the Liberal Mr. 
Gladstone from power. Is it because of the greatness of his cruelties 

any of the various editorials during the Castle scandals, where Earl Spencer is accused of 
screening the most infamous of social criminals, and what can thinking minds conclude 
when they also know that this man, Mr. Wm. O'Brien, is not only a prominent leader of 
the Provincialists, but an idol of a certain class of Irishmen, who are carried away by 
public passion, and not by public judgment, when they make heroes out of such very 
trashy cfey. 

Mr. O'Brien has not informed mankind what remarkable virtues Earl Spencer has 
displayed that the secret torturer and suborner of red-handed murderers, as Mr. O'Brien 
styled him in 1885, should be deserving of such lavish praise, that Mr. O'Brien in 1888 
would consider it an honor to be this once secret torturer's shoe-black. Ireland ! Ire- 
land ! to what depths of degradation are these weathercock Provincialists seeking to 
-drag you down! — December, 1888. 



DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT. 511 

during these five years of horrible persecution, that the Irish agitators- 
to-day style him the " Grand Old Man " ? To most people's idea, there is 
something iniquitous in the grandeur of a Minister whose taskmaster in 
Ireland buries his victims out of sight to destroy the proofs of their 
innocence. The Tories are scarcely more than in office when fresh hope 
springs -up anew in the breasts of the Provincialists. Their papers 
informed the Irish public that there was every probability and possibility 
that the Tories would give Ireland " Home Rule." That accomplished 
Londoner (as he recently styled himself) and British Parliamentarian, 
Mr. T. P. O'Connor, in an article published in a leading American 
review, demonstrates to his own satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of 
his readers, excellent reasons why " Home Rule " should and must come 
from a Conservative government ; and the most powerful argument, and 
the most convincing to those who believe in legal agitation, was the state- 
ment he made that a Tory government alone could expect to carrv such 
a measure successfully through the House of Lords. Other articles 
appeared on this subject. United Ireland, writing on the situation, 
immediately after the resumption of power by the Tories, in its issue of 
June 19, 1885, speaks thus : 

" Circumstances plus the Irish party, however, make it practically 
impossible to carry a coercion bill, even if they introduce it, and the 
result probably would bean estrangement between them and the Orange 
faction here, of which the Irish party should not be slow to take advan- 
tage. Once the English Conservatives throw over the landlord party, the 
Irish question is settled. The Radicals will give the rack-renters no 
assistance, and after the dissolution they would simply be a little knot of 
half a score of malcontents unworthy even to be called a rump. In the 
Upper House alone they would constitute any difficulty, and even there 
it would be easy to reduce them to impotence. If, therefore, either now 
or after the general election, Conservatism cuts off its Orange tail, the 
prospect of an amicable arrangement between the two countries would 
be infinitely improved. 

" The English landlords have hitherto been led by a supposed com- 
munity of interest to stand by their Irish brethren. But we live in the 
days of the democracy, and the center of power has been stripped even 
from the whilom aristocratic party, from the drawing room to the work- 
shop ; they must suit their policy to the necessities of the hour. 

" On religious and educational grounds, the views of the majority of 
the Irish people approach much nearer to the English Church party than 
they do to the Radicals, and as all outrages would come to an end once 
the landlords evacuated, there is no reason in principle why as large, or 
larger, measure of self-government should not be granted by the Tories 
as by the Whigs. Its passage would be immediately facilitated if brought 
in by the Conservatives. 

" A Liberal opposition could not obstruct it as their opponents could. 
The Lords, of course, in which Lord Salisbury has a large majority, 
would follow his lead. On the whole, it seems to us possible that, if the 
Tories are now wise, they may, in spite of the extended franchise, capture 
almost a sufficiency of English and Scotch electors at the dissolution by a 
generous Irish policy, and that with the help of this country a majority 
might be secured. 

"It is probable, however, that some time must elapse before the views 
of Lord Randolph Churchill, influential as he now will be, can permeate 
his colleagues on the Irish question ; while of course the landlord party 
will work heaven and earth against him. The bait is tempting, but will- 
English Conservatives be hooked by it? The alternative put before them 
is intended to frighten them into the acceptance of the offer, it is said. 



512 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The road is clear before them, and it remains to be seen whether they 
will be so foolish as to diverge from it in order to be slaughtered at leisure 
in an ambuscade by the combined Irish and Radical forces." 

Mr. Gladstone, shortly before his defeat, had intended to renew the 
worst features of the expiring Crimes Bill ; this was well known and 
afterward publicly stated by several ex-ministers. The Tories, in the face 
of an approaching dissolution and general election, could not dream of 
doing anything so rash as to introduce such a measure while the possi- 
bilities of six years' lease of power were trembling in the balance. So 
they were compelled, in spite of their .real inclinations, to forego that 
pleasure until after the election ; hence Mr. Gladstone's Bill was allowed 
to expire. Anyone who will carefully read over this article of Utiited 
Ireland cannot but smile at the political prescience of the writer in the face 
of recent occurrences. They will remember that this article was penned 
by a man thoroughly familiar with Parliamentary warfare, who knew 
all its intricacies, and was well posted in the tactics and relative strength 
of British parties. Whatever writers may accuse the Irish party of, they 
must one and all admit that in Parliamentary knowledge they are accom- 
plished and able men. But it is this very familiarity with British parties 
on party questions which blinds them to the real situation ; they are so 
much accustomed to see all issues solved by a combination in Parliament 
that they are convinced they can solve this " Home Rule " question in a 
similar manner. They cannot see, such is the influence of their sur- 
roundings, that this international issue is not solvable at the ballot-box ; 
that the interests of the two nations are directly antagonistic, and no 
combination of Parliamentary parties can reconcile such gigantic interests, 
in which the life of one nation is involved and the supremacy of another 
on the Western Coast of Europe. As well might Spain decree by a vote 
in her Cortes that Gibraltar must be restored to her as Ireland to dream 
that her deputies could ever effect such a change peacefully as that the 
votes of her members will compel any combination of British parties to 
give Ireland over to her own people to make laws and govern her as the 
colonies of this scattered empire govern themselves. In the whole of 
this article in United Irela?id there is not a single mention of trade, 
manufactures, or commerce. The old cry of the land and that worn-out 
bugbear the landlord seems to be the only change which self-government 
is to bring to Ireland, even if obtained. 

There is one extraordinary passage in this article which clearly 
illustrates the confusion of mind these able men seem to have on this 
Home Rule question, for whenever they approach this subject one 
would think that the British Parliament not only changed their Irish 
souls, but robbed them of their intellects. What do the writers in 
United Ireland mean by " as large or larger measure of self-government " 
to be given Ireland by these rival enemies of theirs, the Tories and Whigs ? 
Self-government means exactly what it states. A people either govern 
themselves or they do not. There can be no lesser or greater in the 
question. Do the Provincialists mean that a portion of " Home Rule " 
can be given to Ireland and yet be live self-government ? Would they be 
satisfied, like one of the claimant mothers before Solomon, to take half 
the child, thereby destroying its life by the severance of the executioner's 
sword ? It is feared that they have some such wicked dream. Why do 
they not see, or are they blinded, that the mutilated corpse would have 
no animation ? There has been a growing fear among Irish Nationalists 
that some of these men contemplate this foul treason to their country, 
or what is the meaning of getting freedom by installments ? The British 
minister who conjures up in his fancy that the Irish question would be 
even temporarily settled by such a bleeding fragment makes a great mis- 



DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT. 513 

take. The changelings, with their apparent power and prestige, would 
be powerless despite all their promises. Once the Irish people become 
cognizant of the fact, the great heart of the Irish race beats true to the 
core to their motherland, and although many have been deluded into 
trying Parliamentary agitation, they certainly mean no less a crown of 
nationhood for their country than do their physical force brothers. The 
belief entertained by the United Ireland writer as to Lord Randolph 
Churchill being in favor of " Home Rule" is another proof, if needed, 
what flimsy foundations they try to build the Temple of Liberty upon. 
This article was soon after answered by an interview being brought 
about between Mr. Parnell and Lord Carnarvon, the Tory Lord Lieuten- 
ant of Ireland, at the latter's suggestion and wish. The Tories wished 
to get the Parnellite support by giving vague and empty promises in 
return. So the British earl commenced a conversation on " Home Rule " 
with Mr. Parnell, without exactly compromising his colleagues — with 
whose sanction and approval, no doubt, the interview was permitted — 
and asked Mr. Parnell the leading question to a British statesman, if 
Ireland got " Home Rule," would she, like Canada, protect her manu- 
facturers against England ! Mr. Parnell supposed she would, and Lord 
Carnarvon replied that he thought there would be some trouble over 
this. However, the interview passed off very pleasantly. Mr. Parnell, 
although he could not place his hand upon any definite or tangible 
promise, yet came away fully satisfied that the Tories would give Ireland 
"Home Rule." In fact, it was almost already a Cabinet question, and 
this delusion so filled the soul of Mr. Parnell that it pervaded every 
speech he delivered during the general election. The Liberals were of 
course made aware of this interview, and commenced making overtures 
to their late foes, the Parnellites. It was a case of Codlin and Short 
between Ireland's rival tyrants, with no sincerity in the promises of either. 
United Ireland had an article on the Gladstone overtures entitled 
"Baiting the Trap." It stated: "Never could we have believed the 
Gladstone Government could have stooped to the acts which they 
are now attempting in order to curry favor once more with the Irish 
people." 

What strange political jugglery has taken place since; how different 
this Irish newspaper speaks to-day of this Liberal statesman, who remains 
the same coercionist in heart, and must as a British Minister. 

Mr.,Davitt at this period had a tiff with United Ireland. He had 
written a smart and petulant letter to that paper in reply to some com- 
ments of its on his letter to a Sheffield Radical club declining an offer 
made by it to represent an English borough in Parliament. In his 
refusal to accept the nomination he stated that he did not think that all 
the best men in politics should be sent to Parliament. The natural infer- 
ence to any intelligent reader would be that Mr. Davitt considered him- 
self included in the ranks of the best men in politics, which displayed a 
proper appreciation of himself, and no doubt in ability as a speaker and 
earnestness in agitation Mr. Davitt was right in placing himself on the 
pedestal labeled " Best " ; but not wishing to be uncourteous to the 
Englishmen of Sheffield, he sent a letter to United Irland stating that his 
real reason for declining the nomination for a seat in Parliament was his 
decided objection to take the oath of allegiance to the British Crown. 
United Irelatid got nasty over this letter from Mr. Davitt, its editor and 
proprietors being duly sworn members of Parliament. And it may be 
remarked en passant that this oath-taking is a matter for each gentleman's 
own conscience. Mr. Davitt being one of "our pure patriots," as the 
term is used, was perfectly justified in satisfying himself as to how far 
the taking of this oath might stain his original purity. In the course of 



514 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

United Ireland's remarks on Mr. Davitt's letter it went on to say that 
"since Mr. Davitt's declaration in a letter published in May, 1882, that 'a 
nobler vision ' had dawned upon his views, many persons supposed that 
he had waived his objections to take the oath." The writer in United 
Ireland appeared to have the inclination to hum over the couplet from 
" Patience " : 

Oh, what a very, very pure young man 
This pure young man must be. 

Mr. Davitt was indignant with the writer in United Ireland recalling 
his letter of the " nobler vision," and retorted by saying that his noble 
visions did not contemplate oaths of loyalty to Ireland's enemy, but from 
his point of view more effective methods of bringing down the enemy's 
twin strongholds — landlordism and Castle rule. The letter concludes 
thus : " Had you not in your ill-tempered and unfair article of last week 
broached this subject I should not trouble you with any letter upon it, 
but when you deliberately and maliciously try to place me in a false 
position before the country, and not for the first time, you shall not be 
permitted to do it again with impunity." 

Irish Nationalists are very much afraid that their pure and noble 
countryman displays a slight flavor of losing his temper with his friend 
Mr. William O'Brien ; what the dreadful punishment he alludes to when 
he states that his friend will not again be permitted to misrepresent him 
with impunity may be they cannot imagine — possibly the same destructive 
weapons with which he means to attack the twin strongholds. Irishmen 
have a vivid recollection of reading a certain speech delivered by their 
pure and noble compatriot since at Chicago, in which he very plainly 
pointed out that the most " effective method of bringing down the twin 
strongholds" was by talk, and disclaiming all the naughty, wicked things 
which Mr. Finnerty spoke of. So that there was really no difference 
between his views and Mr. O'Brien's, and it is supposed that they have 
made friends long ago. The " nobler vision " alluded to by Mr. O'Brien 
was a letter written by Mr. Davitt on his release in May, 1882. Here is an 
extract: "If in the hot blood of early manhood, smarting under the 
cruelties and indignities perpetrated in Ireland, I saw appeal to force the 
only means of succoring her, upon my graver thoughts, in the bitter soli- 
tude of a felon's cell, a nobler vision appeared, a dream of the enfranchise- 
ment and fraternization of the peoples, and of the conquering of hate 
by justice." None but a truly pure and noble spirit could breathe these 
lofty sentiments. What a wholesome moral lesson it should have taught 
those incorrigibles who carried the same National sentiments they first 
learned in the hot blood of their youth and early manhood into their maturer 
years, even until their heads were tinged with the winter's rime. If they 
could but see what this dream of the "fraternization of the peoples" has 
done for the dreamer, how prosperity and success has crowned his nobler 
visions ! As he rose up, step by step, the golden hill of fortune how he 
must have pitied the deluded comrades of his early years, who lingered 
in the vale of sorrow below, and to whom no graver or nobler thoughts 
came in their solitude. Then as his intellect developed more and more 
by the clear, bracing atmosphere of the loftier regions he had reached, 
fortune redoubled her-smiles, and the "fraternization of the peoples" 
grew with more sublimity, and still loftier and nobler sentiments animated 
his being. 'Twas then that he conceived the idea of a visit to_ the Holy 
Land. What a splendid field for the philanthropic sentiment 6f "frater- 
nization" had he here before him, the glorious achievement of uniting 
the human family in one brotherhood of peoples. In his wanderings 
before visiting Jerusalem he could make a happy blend of the democra- 



DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT. 515 

cies of France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Spain, Egypt, and any lands 
he chose to visit to fulfill his " nobler vision," including all the various 
tribes around the early home of Christianity. For as this noble vision is 
based on ignoring the national differences and the conflicting interests of 
the Irish and British working classes, would it not be well to spread this 
"fraternization" all over? On his way to Bethlehem Mr. Davitt visited 
Rome, with the pious and dutiful object of paying his respects to the 
Holy Father, but, strange to say, the Pope declined the interview. Mr. 
Davitt's modesty must have kept from his Holiness the knowledge that 
he of the "nobler visions," one of the "best men " in Irish politics, was 
craving an interview. As yet the world has heard nothing further of the 
success of this Eastern journey. Irishmen may feel certain that Mr. 
Davitt daily waxes stronger in love and "fraternization"; perhaps the 
time will soon come when hate will be conquered by justice and by love, 
and when these twin strongholds spoken of by Mr. Davitt — " landlordism 
and Castle rule" — will melt away beneath the fervor of his "nobler 
visions" and the love born of "the fraternization of peoples." 

On July 17, 1885, a very interesting debate took place in the House 
in the presence of Ireland's beloved friend the new Tory Ministry. Mr. 
Parnell rose to call attention to the maladministration of the criminal 
law in Ireland, and more especially of certain provisions of the Crimes 
Prevention Act during the viceroyalty of Earl Spencer, whereby persons 
had in some cases been condemned to death and executed, and in others 
sentenced to penal servitude for life or for long terms of years, which 
sentences were then in operation, and to move that in the opinion of the 
House it is the duty of the Government to institute strict inquiry into 
the evidence and convictions in the Maamtrasna, Barbavilla, Crossma- 
glen, and Castleisland cases, the case of the brothers Delahunty, and 
generally all cases in which witnesses examined in the trials now declared 
that they committed perjury, or in which proof of the innocence of the 
accused is tendered by credible persons, and such inquiries with a view 
to the full discovery of truth and the relief of innocent persons should 
be held in the manner most favorable to the reception of all available 
evidence. 

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of 
the House under the new Administration, in reply said : 

"... Not only are the gentlemen opposite perfectly competent to 
defend themselves, but I must say very frankly that there is very much in 
the Irish policy of the late Government which, though in the absence of 
complete information I do not venture to condemn, I should be very sorry 
to make ?nyself responsible for. (Irish cheers.) . . . 

" In my opinion Lord Spencer and his colleagues made many mistakes, 
but I am convinced that in all his action the whole of his colleagues shared 
equal responsibility." 

In the light of the present Tory r/gime of coercion how ironical 
these remarks read, and yet the agitators are either allied to one or 
other of these British parties, both of which share alike the infamy of 
foreign rule in Ireland. 

On July 24 a banquet was given by the Liberal party to Lord Spencer 
to indorse his policy, which included the hanging of innocent men, as 
alluded to by Mr. Parnell in his speech. All the elite of Whigdom were 
present at this great political dinner. 

Mr. John Bright, in a truly English republican and Radical tone 
taking part in a debate in the House, said : " Who are Earl Spencer's 
assailants ? They are to be found in some of the conductors of the Irish 
press and in some of those who profess to be representatives of Ireland, 
and who sit in that character in the House of Commons. Now these 



516 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

men — I speak of those who have brought these hideous charges against 
Lord Spencer — I say that they are disloyal to the Crown, and that they 
are directly hostile to Great Britain. 

" They have, so far as they could do it, obstructed all legislation which 
was intended to discover or prevent and punish crime. Throughout these 
years, ever since the late Government was formed or nearly so, there has 
been nothing done in the direction of discovering crime or of convicting 
or punishing crime which has not been directly and persistently obstructed 
by these men, who profess to be the friends of Ireland, and who have been 
the most virulent assailants of Lord Spencer." 

Exactly, Mr. Bright. These Irish gentlemen should be disloyal, as you 
term it, to the Crown ; they owe that Crown exactly the same allegiance as 
they do the imperial diadem of the Mikado of Japan. Unfortunately for 
Ireland, whatever latent feeling of this kind these Irishmen had has dis- 
appeared in your Parliament. You complain, good Quaker friend, of Irish- 
men's hostility to Great Britain. What a marvelous discovery ! It is the 
insufferable, unbearable insolence and impudence of your people coming 
into that country to rob and murder them, good man of peace, which is the 
source of all this trouble. Take your army, your police hirelings, and your 
other infamous minions out of Ireland, cease bludgeoning, shooting, and 
stabbing Irish women and children — in one word, takeyourself, unspeakable 
Briton, out of the island, bag and baggage, and Irishmen will cease all 
hostility to you and yours. You can go your ways in peace for aught 
they care. But if you will continue your career of murder and plunder, so 
help them God of justice and of battles, they will retaliate if they can ; and 
if the people would stop trying to reason with you, and deliver one united 
blow or series of blows, you might find the possession of their country a 
more inconvenient prize. 

At a banquet given to Mr. Parnell in Dublin, August 24, of that year, 
in the course of his speech the Irish leader said : 

" We have always got before us that we were sent from this country 
not to remain long in Westminster (cheers), but to remember that it is 
for us to look upon our presence there as a voluntary one and to regard 
our future, our legislative future, as belonging to our own native country 
of Ireland. (Loud cheers.) . . . 

" It is not surely a question of self-government for Ireland, it is only 
a question of how much of this self-government they will be able to cheat 
us out of. (" Hear, hear ! ") It is not now a question of whether the Irish 
people shall decide their own destinies and their own futures which — I 
was going to say our English masters, but I am afraid we cannot call 
them masters in Ireland — it is a question with them as to how far the day, 
what they consider the evil day, shall be deferred. . . 

" / therefore feel assured that the next Irish party will be the last in the 
English and the first in the restored Irish Parliament. (Loud cheers.)" 

What a pity to see such a noble wreck, the better part of his nature 
stolen away, and left bereft of intellect and of judgment. It is a sad, sad 
case to hear such arrant folly from a man once so much thought of. 

United Ireland, in a very extraordinary editorial published on September 
19, 1885, styled : " flan we Hurt England ? " comments on the physical 
aspect of a struggle between Ireland and her foe in that peculiar manner 
which belongs to agitators. Mr. Chamberlain had used in one of his 
speeches the brute force majority between Britain and Ireland. Here are 
given one or two extracts from the Provincial organ : 

" In the sense of smashing her army and navy, indubitably no. Under 
present conditions the day on which England can get us to draw out our 
forces in battle array and pull a trigger is our last. 

" We were nine millions, and England has bled us down to four. 



DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT. 517 

" A man may very easily lose his life in importing a rifle. He will 
assuredly lose his liberty if he keep it anywhere that it won't rot. 

" We expect to find his [Chamberlain's] cruel taunt as to the helpless- 
ness of four millions as against thirty-four quoted with jubilee in the 
organs of the dynamiters as a complete vindication of their recipe for 
making up for want of numbers by strength of gun cotton. 

" Nor are murderous clubs of maniacs or smoldering civil war by any 
means the only physical discomforts that would attend English rule over 
a thoroughly exasperated Ireland. England's right hand would be tied up 
from war with France or Russia or the United States. It is not as in 
the days when the Franco-Dutch armament waited in the Texel for a 
favoring wind till Tone's heart was sick, or when Hoche's ill-starred 
fleet was blown out of Bantry Bay like a fleet of cockleshells. Any of 
these powers could defy the winds and evade the world-scattered English 
fleet and fling five or ten thousand veteran troops with supplies of rifles, 
cannon, and officers upon any given point of the Irish coast. And while an 
Irish rising with scythes and cudgels may seem the best joke in the world 
to Mr. Chamberlain, a French army in possession of Limerick with all the 
hot-blooded youth of the country flocking thither to shoulder its hundred 
thousand French rifles and learn its French drill, coincidently with an 
Irish conflagration throughout Durham and Lancashire, and an Irish 
irruption among the palaces and banking houses of London City, would 
not furnish nearly so cheerful a merriment to a Warrington audience. 

" Nor is the physical arm the only arm of the four millions. Mr. 
Parnell has not fired a shot in anger these five years past ;• yet will any- 
body pretend that English rule conducted under the same conditions it 
has had to wince under for the past five years could long be endurable to 
English rulers ? Either Mr. Forster or Earl Spencer would have slept 
sounder if there had been pitched battles to fight every other day than 
they slept when they had nothing else to face but criticism in Parliament 
and passive resistance in Ireland. Will English statesman ever accept 
such a hell upon earth as a settled form of government ? 

" There would be a general fiscal revolt. 

" Then there is the contingency to which we alluded last week : the 
possibility of a great national boycotting decree against English com- 
mercial travelers; the boycotting of every English official, soldier, and 
policeman in the island ; the boycotting, if needs be, of every steamer, 
ship, or cockboat carrying on intercourse between the two islands ; for 
while all these things would involve a good deal of red ruin and the 
breaking up of laws, will anybody say they are beyond the power of a 
people ready to face any sea of weltering trouble provided that Mr. 
Chamberlain shows them that English domination in this island cannot 
otherwise be overthrown?" 

The writer in United Ireland, whatever abilities he may have as to the 
intricacies of internal or party politics, there can be little doubt he 
would be a most unsuitable person to plan a military campaign. His 
estimation of the physical resources of the island will for the present be 
passed by. The extraordinary boycotting campaign which he speaks of 
here as a means of hurting England is only equaled by the astounding 
information he appears to require from Mr. Chamberlain or somebody, 
Can English supremacy in Ireland be overthrown without hurting Eng- 
land ? Both the boycotting war and the information necessary to com- 



5lS THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

mence it are proof positive that these men are incapable of realizing the 
giant task they've set before them. Think of boycotting the armed forces 
of the enemy. Why, it is the delusion of an imbecile ! Recently some 
people in Ireland boycotted the police, refusing to sell them certain sup- 
plies they needed. What was the result ? Why, the armed men took by 
force what they required, scattered the sellers and their wares, beat some 
and arrested others. 

What punishment would these Provincial writers advocate to use 
against those wicked Constabulary who would not permit themselves to be 
boycotted to carry out United Ireland Vpet theory ? They probably would 
advise a public meeting to protest against these armed police not recog-. 
nizing this ostracism, or else an action in the enemy's courts to recover 
financial damages for the goods destroyed and the injury done to the 
cause by those police not accepting the boycott. What can reasoning 
beings say to men who try to practice and teach such lunacies, and who 
cling with the fanaticism of an obi man to his fetich to that which they 
term " constitutional agitation," and whose mandates they think the 
enemy or his armed myrmidons must respect? These great statesmen 
who would appear to require Mr. Chamberlain or some other enlightened 
Briton to convince them that English domination in Ireland is main- 
tained by force, and also need further information to assure them that 
it will need force to overthrow it. In this article they unscrupulously 
assail the Irishmen who would advocate and try to use this necessary 
force, which proves that these men lack the capacity to either lead or 
advise on national issues. 

What a Solomon this writer is when he makes the public statement 
that " the day when England can get us to draw out our forces in battle 
array and puU a trigger is our last ; " and a little lower down he informs 
his readers of the sad fact that "we were nine millions, and England has 
bled us down to four." Will this Provincial leader inform his country- 
men where in history can he find the carnage of revolution, insurrection, 
or massacre to destroy five millions of people in forty years? Not even 
if he added together the bloodshed of Attila and the sanguinary wars of 
Napoleon could he find so terrible a record of human slaughter. Ireland 
alone of all the nations would find in revolution a means of saving her 
people. This must appear a strange reason for insurrection in the Green 
Isle, but if there were no other reasons, and even slender chances of 
success, the drain on the population, Britain's eager and brutal necessity, 
would be stayed by coming out in the open and fighting the foe in some 
manner. She could not possibly slaughter as much in the ferocity of 
war as she is poisoning and destroying under the present hellish system 
she calls peace. She is hastening with her work of destruction, and is 
hopefully looking forward to the time that she can fulfill the prophecy 
of her vile organ the Times, " When a Celt will be as scarce in Ireland as 
the red Indian on the island of Manhattan." 

The moral assistance this writer gives Britain in denouncing Irish 
Nationalists, whom he terms both dynamiters and clubs des enrages, 
is a novel way to hurt England. The latter title, club of maniacs, he 
insultingly bestows on the brave patriots who were enrolled in the Invin- 
cible organization. 

The writer, in his condemnation of the party of action, uses this 
infamous, slanderous, and false language against the Irish Invincibles : 
" They were only finally smashed because they failed to remember that 
refusing to open their lips in the Castle star chamber only involved a 
week's imprisonment." The small-souled creature who can conceive 
that Irishmen such as those who were capable of making the world ring 
with a daring, desperate act, an act of war against the foe for the pure 



DEFEAT OF THE GLADSTONE COERCION GOVERNMENT. 519 

love of their native land, could possibly be terrified by the threat of one 
week's imprisonment sufficiently illustrates the reasonings of this intelli- 
gent scribe, who, having the medium of a largely circulated Irish paper 
at his command, uses it for belittling, if he can, these men— men whom 
England then and now calculate upon — and their action in the possibili- 
ties of any future struggle, while she would brush aside the silly inanities 
of such people as the writer of this editorial. It will be remembered that 
this newspaper was the organ of the movement that created the Invin- 
cibles. The brutal hypocrisy of thus assailing their own colleagues was 
infamous. 

As an apology for mentioning "dynamiters" and " clubs des em-age's" 
in the editorial with the title " Can we Hurt England ?"— for their assist- 
ance, according to his conclusions, would be but of trifling importance — 
the writer observes : " We recall these things, not that we do not shrink 
from such mad and sanguinary conspiracies with at least as genuine horror 
as Mr. Chamberlain does," but what makes this condemnation in the eyes of 
Irish Invincibles the more damnable is the great possibility that the writer 
holds the very contrary opinions, and that such Irishmen will call these 
foul attacks " diplomacy." Note the pretended lack of knowledge dis- 
played by this cowardly writer. No matter by whom written it is 
helping England. Even if this article had been penned by such con- 
sistent "legal agitators" as Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. Justin McCarthy, 
or the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan, it cannot lessen the grave injury such 
articles do the cause of Ireland, coming from men who pose as Nation- 
alists. This article called " Can we Hurt England ?" has the decided 
effect of hurting Ireland, and must have done some injury to her cause, 
circulating widely among the Irish people, many of them men of poor 
education and inability to grasp the situation, such as the masses of the 
toilers are in all nations. Men may call it "good policy," and keeping 
the enemy in the dark, but its proper name is foul treason to the sacred 
cause of country. 

The slave cowering beneath the whip of the taskmaster cannot express 
his real opinions, or the lash would fall upon his shoulders in the shape of 
penal servitude and his property become confiscated to the foe. But he 
can at least preserve a dignified silence. He should not share in the delu- 
sion that it is " diplomacy " to slander the memory of Ireland's heroic dead, 
and try to filch away the reputation of men who to-day suffer in England's 
dungeons under the charge of being both " dynamiters " and "Invin- 
cibles," while he and le Societe des Imbeciles risk three or six months in 
jail and come out with noisy acclamations because, forsooth, they are 
martyrs and heroes to the campaign of talk. 

Robert Emmet's dying request that no man should write his epitaph 
was addressed to the mock Nationalists of his time and such as this writer 
in United Ireland of to-day. Speaking to such moral cowards* he said: 
" For as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not 
prejudice or ignorance asperse them." What the dying Emmet asked the 
world should be asked for the memory of men surrounded by the rotten- 
ness of all the calumny and slander of this age. 

But these Provincialists will not permit this silence. In trumpet tones 
they are slandering the memory of these martyred patriots, and at the same 
time are in criminal alliance with the enemy's radical faction that took 
these men's lives. The world looks on and sees a false issue placed 
before mankind for its judgment, which is an attempt to fasten a stain 
upon the Irish nation. Let the truth, then, in the same trumpet tones go 
before the just and liberty-loving peoples. The enemy's Government is 
in full possession of all the needful information it requires, and it is 
against their interest that these fact's should see the light of day. In the 



5 20 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

language of Senor Castelar, it is their great anxiety that these patriots 
and martyrs should be slandered by their own countrymen, and their 
action condemned in the high court of public opinion. The present 
writer will state this case before that great tribunal, satisfied that the 
noble and thinking of mankind will indorse the motives and principles 
which actuated the brave and patriotic sons of an ancient race under the 
most hellish and brutal of persecutions. 



CHAPTER XXXVII, 

(1881, 1882, and 1883.) 

INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE IRISH NATIONAL INVIN- 
CIBLES — THE LONDON " TIMES" ARTICLES, " PARNELLISM AND CRIME." 

Britain's Interest to Destroy every Germ of Irish Hostility — Entrapping the Provincialists 
to Condemn the Invincible Organization — The Invincible Movement — " History 
Relates but does not Inform against " — " We shall give no Names, but we shall Paint 
Reality " — " What we Relate we can Say that we Saw " — The Enemy Striking Madly 
and Wildly — Arrest of Parnell and the Leaders — Formation of the Irish National 
Invincibles by the Irish Government of National Defense — Invincibles Created, 
Enrolled, and Invested with Authority by the Irish Nation — Thousands of Men Organ- 
ized — Spread of the Movement over the Entire Country — Created and Organized by 
the Government of the Irish National League — Its Authority the Legal Power 
Covenanted to the Parliamentary Movement by the Irish People — The Invincibles and 
the League Practically one and the same Organization — " It is Seldom Wrong to Speak 
the Truth Plainly " — Licentious Action of Gladstone and Forster — Arbitrary and 
Wanton Arrests — The Mask of Peace Torn off — Bayonets, Buckshot, and Dungeons 
Hold Sway — " Suppression " of the Chiefs of the Enemy's Murder Bureau Decided on 
— Meeting of the Government of National Defense in a French Town — Programme of 
Action Decided on — Guerrilla Warfare Ordered — The Invincible Organization Con- 
fined to Ireland — Its Spread over Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught — Forster 
Guarded by Armed Men in London — The Enemy on the Alert — Full of Vague Suspi- 
cions — Forster and the Invincible Meeting in the House of Commons Passageway — 
Alarm of Forster — Hurrying of the Guards — The Enemy ever Watchful — Armed cap- 
h-pie to Prevent Surprise — An Officer to take Command of the Invincibles in Dublin 
appointed by the Directory — The local Dublin Council — Forster's Drive to Dublin 
Castle — Scene Along the Quays — Invincibles on the Alert — Forster's Carriage Followed 
by the Invincible Vehicle — Men Drawn up along the Drive — The Omitted Signal — 
Failure of the Attack — Forster Hurriedly Leaves for London — His Return to Dublin 
— Scene at Westland Row — Forster's Drive to Dublin Castle — The Invincible Vehicle 
in Front — The Barricade on the Quay — Forster's Carriage Stopped — Escorted by 
Three Ladies — Swoop of the Invincibles Stopped by Authority — The Secretary's Car- 
riage Drives on — The Kilmainham Treaty — Astonishment and Surprise of the Invin- 
cibles — Forster Leaving Dublin — Drenching Rain, Scene in the Streets — Muster of 
Invincibles along Great Brunswick Street — Forster's Carriage Reaches Westland Row 
— The Secretary Does not Come — Charge of Invincibles into the Railway Station — 
Forster not in the Train — The Midnight Guard — Invincible Vehicle — Forster's Ruse — 
Invincible Officer's Dispatch to his Government — Peremptory Reply, Go on with the 
Work — Order to Concentrate in the Phoenix Park — March of a Troop of British 
Hussars — To Meet Again on the Morrow — Night of the 5th of May in Dublin — 
Anxiety of the Invincible Commander — News Reaches the Invincibles of the Ballina 
Massacre — Invincibles' Horror at the British Murder of Irish Boys — The Morning of 
the 6th of May — Arrival of a new Foreign Governor — Arrival of a New Chief of the 
Murder Bureau — His Official Responsibility for Last Night's Murders — The Gathering 
in the Park — Mustering of Armed Invincibles — Determination to Succeed — Expecting 
to be Hemmed inside a Circle of Death — The arrival of the Hussars Looked for — The 
Armed Constabulary's probable Arrival on the Scene — Skirmishers Posted — Invincibles 
Ready for a Fight if Necessary — Polo Match in the Phoenix Park — The Enemy's Armed 
Guards Scattered about — The Invincible Skirmish Line — Possible Bloody Encounter 
and Combat to the Death — The British Chiefs of the Murder Bureau Meet — 
The Invincibles Come up — The Gleam of the Uplifted Steel — Panic of the British 
Guards — They Quickly Scatter and Disappear — Fright of a British Cavalry Officer 
— The Invincibles Outgeneral the Foe — A Walk past the Constabulary Barracks 
— The Park Gates not Closed — Blunders of the Enemy — Invincible Conference of 
May 7 — Indignation of the Dublin Invincibles at the Parnellite Proclamation — 
Moral Assistance to the Enemy — Treason to the Men in the Gap — Dispatch from the 
Invincible Executive — The Officer in Command of the Dublin Invincibles Arrives at 
Headquarters — One of the Invincible Directory Calls on Him — "Suppression" of a 
Local Tyrant at Castle Taylor, Ardrahan — His British Cavalry Guard Slain — The In- 
vincible Government order a Truce — Weakness and Irresolution — Parliamentarians' 

521 



522 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Policy of Prudence — Organizing Fresh Bands of Invincibles in Dublin — Arrests by 
the Enemy — A Lady Messenger Sent to Dublin — British Hangings Horrify the 
Invincible Government — Their Hands are Forced by the Enemy — Order for Hostilities 
to be Resumed — Preparations for Active Operations in Dublin — Arms Seized by the 
Enemy in Carey's Loft — James Carey Removed from Active Service in the Invincible 
Ranks — Carey loyal but Indiscreet — The Dublin Commander and the Local Officers 
— Conferences — British Officials wear Bullet-proof Shirts — Ostentatiously Guarded 
by Armed Men — Fresh Arms for the Invincibles — Invincible Captain Carrying Arms- 
to Dublin Travels with a British Colonel — Dublin Filled with Royal Marines — British 
on Guard against their Unseen Invincible Foes — The Red Earl's Ride — His Escort 
Half a Troop of Cavalry — The Invincible Commander's Plan to Attack the 
Earl and his Guard of Cavalry — Shells Urgently Required — Strong Force of Con- 
stabulary Guard Judge Lawson's Country House — The Two Invincibles Recon- 
noiter — Lawson's Constabulary Guard Invite them to Dine — The Invincibles 
Receive all the Information Necessary Unasked — Constabulary Sergeant Shows 
Invincible Lieutenant over the Ground — Sergeant Completely Unconscious who 
his Guests are — Lawson's City Guard — Invincibles Concentrate at Stephen's Green, 
Dublin — Waiting for Judge Lawson — "Will he Come?" — Expected Fight with 
his Armed Guard — No News — Delany's Blunder — His Excitement — His Capture 
by Lawson's Guard — No News at Stephen's Green — The Waiting Invincibles Retire 
— First News of Delany's Blunder and Capture — Panic among the Enemy — Fright 
of Leading British Officials — Delany's Blunder Saves Lawson — Vigilance Com- 
mittee of the I. R. B. Shooting Affray in Abbey Street — The Invincible Command- 
er's Surprise — Invincibles not Engaged — Planned Attack on Two of the Leading 
Jurors of the Murdered Francis Hynes — Attack on Juror Field — Westland Row 
Patrolled by Invincibles — The Expected Juror out of the City — Panic among the 
British 'Supporters in Dublin — Fresh Rewards Offered by Dublin Castle — Invin- 
cibles' Necessity for Powerful Explosives — Demand for Bullet-proof Shirts by Irish 
Traitors — The Enemy's Lord Governor Doubly Guarded — Arrests for Examination 
in Dublin — All Suspected Nationalists Arraigned — Secret Star Chamber Investiga- 
tion in Dublin Castle — Carey and Kavanagh Refuse to give any Information — Both 
Prove Loyal at this Epoch — Ten Thousand Pounds no Temptation — Threats Fail to 
Shake Them — The Dublin Invincible Commander's Demand for Shells — His Urgent 
Request to the Executive — The Star Chamber Fails — The Enemy's Gold has no Seek- 
ers — Invincibles not to be Bribed — John Bull's Dilemma — Spencer's Determination 
to Arrest all Suspects — Training Hired Perjurers to become Familiar with the 
Appearance of Certain Suspected Men — British Determination to Hang in any 
Event — Policy of Endeavoring to Strike Terror Decided on by the Enemy — 
Dublin Filled with Marines and Spies — The Enemy Striking in the Dark — The 
Dublin Commander's Efforts to Procure the Shells — Timid Parliamentary Politicians 
Strangle their own Active Movement — Invincible Action Suffers — The Dublin Com- 
mander's Visit to one of the Leading Members of the Executive — Demand for 
Shells Made Urgent — Messenger from Dublin to Headquarters — The Invincible 
Officers Specially Request their Leader on the Scene — His Last Journey to 
Dublin — Conference — Preparations for the Attack on Spencer and the Cavalry 
Guard — The Last Meeting — The Last Farewell — Midnight Swoop of the Enemy 
— The British Strike Haphazard — The Enemy's Swoop Enrages Dublin Invinci- 
bles — New Bands await Orders to strike Spencer and his Guards — The Dublin 
Commander's Journey to Meet Executive — Procrastination — Nervous Caution if 
not Fright — The Statesman's Message — Promises of Support — Base Surrender 
of the Invincible Executive — The Dublin Men Cowardly Abandoned — Parliamen- 
tary Tactics Triumphant — All Dreams of Hostility Pass away from the Parlia- 
mentary Invincibles. 

The hour has come when the history of the Irish National Invincible 
organization must be written. The slanders and false issues spread broad- 
cast by the foreign usurpers in Ireland, and their " murder organ," the 
London Times, must be answered. The venomous attacks on Irish 
Nationalists by the organ of the Dublin Castle assassination conspiracy 
have been not only acquiesced in by the Provincialist leaders, but some of 
these men have unhappily aided the Times by joining that hostile journal 
in its vile attempt to fasten crime upon the Invincibles, and through them 
upon the Irish nation. These attacks can only be characterized as cow- 
ardly, for the Provincialists knew well that they could not be answered 
back, while one shred of hope was left them in the pursuit of their Home 
Rule policy, or what they have impressed upon the Irish masses as such. 
But at last there comes a glimmer of light, when the Truth can proclaim 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 523 

itself, and dispel by its pure rays the murky clouds that have darkened 
Irish intellects. 

Several of the Provincialists have been honored by an accusation — or 
charge, as it is termed — brought against them by the Dublin Castle con- 
spirators' organ. They have been accused by this London newspaper of 
association with the heroic bands of Irish patriots that covered the green 
island in the years 1881-82-83. 

Mankind has been grossly deceived from the date of the incident in the 
Phoenix Park as to the nature of the Irish National movement, which 
caused the " turning down " of the chiefs of the enemy's assassination 
bureau on that memorable May evening to the present time. 

First by the panic which caused some of the Provincialist leaders to 
issue a misleading proclamation, which was apparently put forth by these 
weak-nerved men in fear of personal attack, and since by the action of the 
Provincialists in reply to the London Times. Not satisfied with denying 
their alliance with the patriots, they wantonly assailed the characters of 
these men. These Parnellites denied that they were associated with crim- 
inals and assassins, as they foully called the Invincibles, thereby staining 
their country's name with crime. Not only was this a further recognition 
of the invader's right to rule them, but they were words of foul treason 
against their suffering motherland. 

At the time they uttered these words they were and are to this hour 
(December, 1887) in criminal alliance with British assassins — men whom 
the Parnellists themselves so characterized ; men whose hands are red with 
the blood of the women stabbed and shot in Belmullet, and of the children 
brutally massacred in Ballina ; men who sent innocent victims to the 
scaffold by the deliberate perjury of bribed and manufactured testimony ; 
men whose reign of blood and despotism in Ireland was denounced in no 
measured language by these Provincialists who are now in alliance with 
those they then so justly condemned. From William O'Brien's leading 
article " The Bloody Assize," to his famous cartoon and article " The 
Departure of the Red Earl," nothing could be more scathing, more bitter, 
and denunciatory than his description of this conspirator against Ireland's 
freedom, who is now his friend ; nothing could be more sweeping than the 
epithets hurled upon these Gladstonian ministers by the " legal agita- 
tors," men in whose honor they now ask the Irish race to sing hallelujahs ; 
praising these self-same Liberal ministers, whom they then accused of 
"Burying their victims out of sight." Such is the slavish and debasing 
state to which " legal agitation " has reduced these agitators. At this 
date they wear their chains with pride, and are trying to make their 
'countrymen become like themselves, willing slaves of the invader. 

These public slanders on the Irish name must be answered. As no 
other appears willing to mount the breach the present writer, an humble 
actor in these scenes, will attempt this thorny task. It is not alone a sacred 
duty to do so now — it is more ! it is an imperative one ! 

The events which we are about to relate belong to that dramatic and 
living reality which the historian would neglect for lack of material, or 
else write the false and slanderous statements purposely circulated by the 
British enemy, who has the ear of the world. But in them are to be found 
the life, the palpitation, the quivering of Irish patriotism and self-sacrifice. 
Small incidents in the history of Ireland some will say : but these are the 
foliage of great events, the forerunner of successful revolution. The epoch 
known as the Invincible period abounds in many such small incidents. 
The so-called judicial investigations of the enemy ; these illegal and mock 
trials in Dublin, for other reasons than history did not reveal anything but 
superficial and misleading knowledge. For a time even the enemy's gov- 
ernment did not get to the bottom of the movement. Perhaps they have 



524 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

not yet got to the bottom of everything. But they know sufficient, both 
Tory and Radical Ministers, Salisbury, Gladstone, Balfour, and Spencer, 
to serve the interests of their own country and to try to sap the source 
of Irish patriotism by pretended ignorance and misleading tactics, the 
further to deceive the too credulous Irish people. Each of these hostile 
parties plays before mankind its allotted part in the great drama. On one 
side we find an affected condemnation of Mr. Parnell and his colleagues, 
and on the other a simulated horror and indignation at the Times' charges. 
But both parties are equally determined to uproot and if possible destroy 
all active hostility against their rule in Ireland, by stamping with shame, 
disgrace, and if possible contempt, all exertions on the part of Irish 
patriots — men who would bring force of any kind, even irregular weapons 
of war, to harass and in some measure destroy the enemy whose brutal 
career of extermination is so rapidly decimating their country. 

Both these British parties are playing a skillful and well thought out 
movement, by entrapping the Irish Provincialists to most effectively aid 
their purpose, and so enlist the sympathy of warm-hearted, impulsive, and 
unthinking Irishmen to unconsciously abet their rule by condemning the 
action of the only Irish enemies they fear — those men who, by small 
endeavors to destroy their country's foe, are trying to guide and spur the 
Irish nation on the path to revolution. By making this issue appear 
before the world as a case of slander by that venomous London paper, 
the Times, against the once universally loved Charles Stewart Parnell 
the enemy hopes to reap the benefit of these so-called charges, by bring- 
ing the Irish mind round to the condition which will result in the unani- 
mous condemnation of the Invincibles as criminals — a position already 
publicly assumed by the Provincialist movement. 

Revelations of prominent Irishmen being actually implicated in the 
creation of this hostile organization the invaders fear would give such 
movements tone and prestige in the eyes of some Irishmen, and of man- 
kind generally, that would be most injurious to British interests. These 
interests imperatively demand that all such knowledge should be sup- 
pressed. It would interfere with their purpose, it might seriously mar 
their great necessity, the eradication of every germ of national life in the 
Irish heart, and the turning of the sturdy sentiment of nationality into a 
puny and meek Provincialism. It is for these British foes of Ireland, Tory 
and Radical alike, a vital necessity to crush out the seeds of active hos- 
tility to their power in the island, which, after all their long reign of terror, 
might again develop and blaze up into a war for national independence. 

They know their weakness as a military power, the paucity of their 
army, the great strain their various conquests make upon their military 
effectiveness, and if Ireland is not kept quiet by the deadly Provincial 
opiate, which they hope will lull her until the population becomes less 
than two millions, she might give them serious trouble, and bring on for 
them a dreaded war, which would reveal the rottenness of their power 
and might presage the downfall of their ill-gotten empire. 

From hneutes might spring insurrection, and once the torch had set 
ablaze the inflammable materials, which generations of horrible persecu- 
tion have made ready for the hands of the daring revolutionary leader, who 
could say — who could positively assert where the conflagration would 
stop ? And then the possibility that some among the many enemies of 
Britain in Europe, urged on by interested motives, might come to the aid 
of the battling Irish as France, liberty-loving France, helped the American 
revolutionists. 

All these possible eventualities British statesmen foresee, and so they 
cunningly contrive to bring about such a state of things that the Irish 
people will assist their diplomacy ; the horror and condemnation of the 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 525 

Times is part of this deep laid scheme. In their chivalry, coming to the 
rescue of Mr. Parnell, the Irish Provincialists are unconsciously preaching 
a strange doctrine to their fellow countrymen. In effect they say that 
it is crime to slay a British invader, but it is highly honorable to be allied 
to the murderers of Ellen McDonagh, Patrick Melody, Mary Deane, 
Francis Hynes, Myles Joyce, and the numerous victims of British crime 
during Mr. Gladstone's rule of blood and tyranny, 1880 to 1885. 

Few of these Irish Provincialists but would stand back aghast if they 
saw the conclusions mankind and history must draw from their misled 
action. 

We shall therefore bring to light among the known and published cir- 
cumstances some things which have never been publicly known ; acts, or 
rather, premeditated deeds, which were, alas for Ireland ! destroyed in the 
womb. 

Over this heroism of daring oblivion has passed, and over some of these 
patriots death. Most of the actors in these scenes have disappeared ; 
many have merged into the silent stream of national life that flows on 
quietly under the invader's rule. Some others in Ireland to-day listen 
with bitterness and cynicism to the mountain of falsehood the enemy 
has built up, helped by certain Provincialists, men who seem to have 
betrayed their country to the foe. Others, again, are enduring the horrors 
of dungeons, toils, and chains, where not one ray of light can penetrate. 
It is perhaps as well it is so ; if these noble-hearted, though humble, men 
could learn how their honor has been assailed, their motives aspersed, the 
dignity of their country dragged into the mire with such foul treachery, 
the deepest and blackest turpitude known in history, their load of torture 
would be doubled by this agony of falsehood. 

Could they hear this heaven-sent minister, Mr. Gladstone, denounce 
the Tories for herding political prisoners with ordinary criminals, what 
would they think of his wretched hypocrisy, they themselves living proofs 
of his own similar action ? 

Or perhaps the Liberal leader means that political prisoners are those 
only who talk for their nation's freedom, not the men who would dare to 
strike for its independence. 

Some few of these men have gone into exile, and not the less bitter 
has been their lot ; calumny and ingratitude have been their perse- 
cutors. 

Others, and these the most fortunate, met a patriot's death on the scaf- 
fold, but the immortal spirit of liberty still lives on, whether in the breast 
of the exile or the prisoner in the dungeon or the ex-Invincible waiting in 
his native land. 

And so these actors have disappeared. They have remained silent ; 
but what we shall relate we can say that we saw. We shall give no 
names, for history relates and does not inform against, but we shall 
paint reality. From the nature of the subject of which we are writing, we 
shall show an episode, one side, and that certainly the least known, of the 
eventful 6th of May, 1882, in the Phoenix Park, Dublin ; but we shall do 
it in such a way that the reader may catch a glimpse under the gloomy 
veil which we are about to lift of the real countenance of that historic 
tragedy. 

When Mr. Gladstone violated all his promises made to Ireland — 
promises just as fulsome in their hope and sweetness as he is making 
to-day — when he outraged the liberty, supposed to exist, of the British 
Commons, to suppress Irish debate, and on the following evening turned 
the Irish members out of the House, he sounded the death knell of con- 
tinued "legal agitation," or alliance with those who advocated it, so far as 
the Irish Nationalists in Britain and in Ireland could at that time influence 



526 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

this feeling. He did more ; he sent a quiver of rage and a thirst for 
retaliation into the Provincialists' ranks — a feeling that for the time was 
more extreme, and led to more extreme results, than any ever entertained 
by the Nationalists up to that period. They were angered and outraged 
at Mr. Gladstone's renewed violation of his promises — promises which 
they had kept, up to this, before the eyes of their countrymen, the 
Nationalists, if ever any of them hinted at physical force. 

Froude, in condemning Mr. Gladstone for these promises, said : 
" Mr. Gladstone began with an acknowledgment for which he has been 
violently blamed, that the Clerkenwell explosion had enabled him to deal 
with the Irish problem. // is seldom rvrong to speak the truth plainly. 

" Ireland, he told us, was to be governed henceforth by Irish ideas — 
Irish ideas in the only form in which they could force themselves upon 
the legislature were the ideas of those who most hated England. Who 
defied the law as it stood and enforced their own rival laws with knife 
and bullet." 

Exactly, Mr. Froude ; your last remarks as here quoted express the 
feelings with which every patriotic Irish Nationalist looks upon the issue 
between these two islands. The legislature you speak of has neither legal 
right nor authority to make any laws for Ireland, any more than it has for 
France. Ireland never surrendered her independence, and never at any 
time gave your British Parliament the right to legislate for her ; conse- 
quently it is a piece of gratuitous presumption, impertinence, and usurpa- 
tion for this London legislature of your countrymen to make laws and 
expect them to be binding in Ireland. They are illegal edicts, which are 
obeyed at the point of the bayonet. You defy justice and legality, and 
enforce your laws with knife, bullet, buckshot, perjured witnesses, mock 
trials, juries selected from rebels and traitors to Ireland, who are packed to 
record a sentence already decreed in Dublin Castle, and you murder your 
victim by the assistance of a rebel to Ireland, who wears a wig and is called 
a Judge, but who is a traitor to his nation, and a hireling who has sold 
himself to a foreign government for gold ; honor and distinction to him 
are the badge of treason which he wears before mankind. Ireland has 
never been legally under British rule, has never been legally a part of the 
British Empire, and the pirate flag of so-called conquest flies there because 
of the force which her robber invaders use. Consequently the natives of 
the island have every God-given right ever enjoyed by a people to use 
both knife and bullet, and every implement that a brave people can use 
to kill, maim, and destroy those barbarous invaders, who have been carry- 
ing on for centuries a cruel war of extermination in Ireland, which war 
goes on, unceasing, to this day. 

Mr. Froude, it is seldom wrong, as you have said, to speak the truth 
plainly, and this is the answer Ireland would give you, if moral cowardice 
of the leaders or false policy, in addition to the serfdom of British chains, 
had not closed the lips of the people. These — these are the real senti- 
ments of the great mass of the Irish race ! 

But Mr. Gladstone does not believe with Mr. Froude in speaking 
the truth plainly. He believes in deceptive promises, which deceive 
the Irish people for a time, but are certain to bring a reaction when they 
remain unfulfilled, as they did at this period of Ireland's history. 

The passing of Mr. Gladstone's Coercion Act was the signal to fill the 
prisons with every Irishman that this benevolent statesman's minions in 
Ireland chose to suspect of loyalty to their country. Merchants and men 
of probity and position were crammed into jail — no mockery of a trial 
even, or offense charged ; no accusation or accusers. The invader was 
on the warpath, and his despotic edicts were obeyed. Among the earliest 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 527 

arrest was that of the gentle, but at this period uncompromising, John 
Dillon. 

The rebel press in Dublin, the Daily Express, Irish Times, and Evening 
Mail, were delighted. These organs of Irish treason, who were politically 
allied to the British Tories, and who invariably found fault with Mr. 
Gladstone, now applauded his firmness. He was the hero of the hour 
— the Grand Old Man, who had crushed out what they termed sedition. 

Ireland appeared, bound hand and foot, ready for the slaughter. 

The loyal Irish of all shades of opinion, Nationalist and Provincialist 
alike, saw that a crisis was approaching. Gladstone's dastardly arrest of 
Mr. Dillon and Mr. Davitt enraged the most timid Provincialist. The 
blows that were struck by the enemy, in quick succession, made all feel 
that Ireland should answer back in some practical manner. 

The Provincialists said that to allow this state of things to continue 
would be disgracing the Irish character for manliness, and destructive 
of the best interests of the country ; that if a war of independence was 
not for the moment feasible, at least a war of retaliation should be at 
once entered upon. 

At this time all eyes were turned on Mr. Parnell. The hour had come ! 
had Ireland found the man ? Did the warrior blood of gallant old Iron- 
sides course through the veins of his grandson ? Had Ireland found in 
him her Wolfe Tone or her Washington ? Or did the blood of the descend- 
ant of a member of the Yeoman's Parliament predominate in the Parnell 
of our day ? Had he the instinct of those settlers, who talked mock 
nationality after their cold-blooded massacre of the '98 patriots ? Which — 
which characteristic held sway in this then foremost Irishman ? Would 
Charles Stewart Parnell show in this crisis of his country's fate the unflinch- 
ing resolution, heroism, and desperate daring of his brave grandsire Com- 
modore Stewart ? 

Mr. Parnell's visit to Paris, after his insulting expulsion from the British 
Commons, was watched with expectancy. At this time vague rumors 
began to circulate through Irish national circles of an approaching struggle 
with the foe. The Provincialists were bitterly hostile to Mr. Gladstone 
and his government, and if vituperative language was a key to their inten- 
tions, and to what they were prepared to do against their cruel and tyran- 
nical enemy, these men were fast becoming far more extreme than the 
Nationalists, whose cardinal doctrine had always been physical force. 

Mr. Parnell's visits to these two great and patriotic Frenchmen, the 
illustrious and revered Victor Hugo, and the liberty-loving and pro- 
nounced revolutionist Henri Rochefort, convinced the Nationalists in 
Ireland that something serious was meditated. All parties knew that there 
was no alternative left Mr. Parnell ; he must either fight or accept willing 
slavery and so basely surrender. There was no Irishman who for a 
moment dreamt that surrender was once thought of by Charles Stewart 
Parnell, so universally was he beloved and respected by the Irish patriots 
at this period. 

That he had determined on fight of some kind the Irish people were 
satisfied, but of what nature the new war of retaliation should be, or in 
what manner it would develop itself, they were willing to leave in the 
hands of the men whose duty it was to meet this emergency, forced on the 
Irish nation by the enemy. They were confident in the wisdom of Mr. 
Parnell and his associates, believing in their courage and in their indomit- 
able determination to face the foe unflinchingly. Ireland was ready to 
support them to victory or death. 

Mr. Parnell's letter to the Land League Council in Dublin did not in 
the slightest manner undeceive the masses of the people ; they looked upon 
this dispatch as a ruse de guerre, they were satisfied it meant to convey to 



528 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the people the opposite information and belief to what it appeared to 
express, for all knew they had a wily foe to deal with. 

The emphatic tone of the letter staggered some few men, but even these 
could not believe but that the grandson of old Ironsides would be equal 
to the occasion. The cowardly surrender expressed in the letter they 
attributed to the new system of diplomacy then unfortunately taught the 
Irish people. 

That Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues knew that they were arousing 
hostility into an active shape against them in Ireland there can be no 
question. Their actjon was taken with the full knowledge of this fact in 
view. In the summer of this coercion year (1881) the British Ministers 
sent round a circular to the Constabulary officers in Ireland, asking each 
to forward his written opinion, if the people in his district were organized 
and prepared to take the field. 

Mr. Gladstone's denunciation of Mr. Parnell at Leeds, and his appeal 
there to all British parties to unite in combined hostility to Ireland and 
the League, was a finishing stroke to peaceful counsels. This bitter attack, 
coming from the benevolent Mr. Gladstone, removed the last remnant of 
hope from the breast of the wavering Irish Provincialists. 

What had been in embryo for some time — the determination to event- 
ually take active steps against the hostility of the enemy's unmitigated 
tyranny — was at once adopted, and the organization of the Irish Invincibles 
sprang into being. This new organization was the inner circle of the 
peaceful Land League, which the invader was striking at with merciless 
blows. This new and defensive power, to their eternal honor, was the 
creation of the Parnellite Irish Government. So unceasing now was the 
tyranny of the enemy, so deaf to all appeals of reason, that every man saw 
that it was useless to attempt to solve the issues between the islands of 
Britain and Ireland peacefully. The invader would hear of nothing but 
absolute and degrading surrender, so brutal and licentious was the action 
of Mr. Gladstone and his despotic lieutenant Forster. The wanton 
arrests, the arbitrary and despotic conduct of the British officials, was too 
much even for the most peaceful ; human endurance had broken down, 
the Provincialists were now fully determined to far outstep the previous 
action of the Nationalists and make Britain feel that Ireland was yet to 
be conquered. 

It must be distinctly understood that the creation of this new and im- 
portant Irish organization, or rather the transferring of the braver and 
more determined members of the Land League into the National Invin- 
cibles, was not the work of subordinates in the Parnellite ranks. It was 
the action of those who governed the movement — men the very highest 
intellectually and authoritatively — and to whom were delegated the legiti- 
mate control and responsibility of meeting every exigency forced upon 
them by the exasperated enemy. In a word, the Invincibles sprang into 
existence by order of The Parnellite Government of Ireland, 
Elected by the Irish Nation.* 

It will be recollected that, as has been written in an earlier chapter, 

* In the face of the events which have occupied public attention since this book was 
written, and the acted lie which the Parnellites in the concrete presented to the enemy's 
tribunal, — a tribunal appointed by a foreign government without legal authority to inquire 
into the manner a neighboring nation chose to make war, — these Provincialists, who collect- 
ively admitted they were loyal slaves to British rule in their country, indignantly repu- 
diated all association with the " suppression " in the Phoenix Park or knowledge of the 
military Parnellites who carried out that historic incident. 

In the face of this repudiation and the statement written above, and probable contra- 
diction from men who think their connection cannot be proven, and others who possibly 
had none, we state most emphatically that facts, as narrated in this volume, are known to the 
writer personally, and can be substantiated by plenty of living witnesses, which will bring 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 529 

many of the Parnellites — members of the British Parliament and others 
of the party — sought safety from the chance of arrest by leaving Ireland. 
But this possibly proper and prudent course ought not to have so terror- 
ized them that their voices should be silent in the National councils at 
this crisis. To their shame be it recorded, they completely absented them- 
selves from all direction of affairs. True, these men were of secondary 
rank in the party, but then they were men of sufficient prominence to set a 
good example by their presence to help on whatever policy was decided 
on. Some one or two leading men were altogether absent from the 
scene, and too far away to take any part in the conduct of affairs, but the 
crisis was far too keen for these men to have remained away if they were 
as patriotic as their countrymen thought. But every one of these men 
who were absent from the post of duty equally share the responsibility of 
the events which ensued, and are morally and legally bound to the action 
of their government in beginning a war of reprisals against the British 
foe in Ireland, and the creation of the Irish National Invincibles. 

Well and ably was the Parnellite government assisted by the men 
whom they sent to spread the new organization. Every one of these 
brave men were prominent Parnellite officials. In every province of 
Ireland the Invincible movement was spread by these patriotic Irishmen, 
who traveled under great difficulties, exposed to arbitrary arrest by the 
enemy's minions, who were at this period watchful and alert. His hirelings 
and spies were scattered broadcast over the land. But no dangers could 
intimidate these brave Parnellite organizers. They enrolled the manhood 
of the League in the new movement. Irish blood was up, and the people 
were ready to obey the Parnellite government in any undertaking. They 
felt satisfied that their leaders would adopt no policy but that which was 
honorable and necessary to meet the vicissitudes and necessities of the 
hour. It was decided by the Parnellite government, which was also with 
two exceptions the executive of the Invincibles, that there was no alterna- 
tive but to meet the assassin rule of Britain by force. The enemy had 
trampled on his own constitution and torn into shreds the last strip of 
mock legality under which Ireland was supposed to be governed. A 
species of guerrilla warfare was determined on (it was the Future making 
its appearance on the scene) to meet the relentless attacks of the invader. 

Britain's position in Ireland, they held, was that of the burglar who had 
broken into the nation's home to rob and waylay the residents. Assassi- 
nation and misery followed in his train. The chief of Ireland's ravagers, 
the men from whose bureaus sped the orders of bloodshed and destruction, 
so ruthlessly carried out by their armed hirelings, were termed by the 
enemy the " Chief Secretary," and " Under Secretary of State." It was 
resolved by the earliest council held by the Executive of the Invincibles, 
that these ferocious offices should be kept vacant by the continued "sup- 
pression" of their holders. This order was not leveled at any particular 
or especial occupant of these bloodstained posts of the foe, but all and 
every succeeding foreign invader who came to occupy these " suppressed " 

this association lamentably close to the core of highest and supreme responsibility and to 
the very seat and center of actual power and authority. 

There are good men who may possibly blame this expose" 'of the truth, where they can- 
not shame it. In the words of Washington, speaking of the criticism he expected on the 
then newly created Constitution — a diversity of opinions and inclinations on the subject 
had been expected by him — said he : ' v The various passions and motives by which men 
are influenced are concomitants of fallibility and ingrafted into our nature." 

This book shall not be published until events are ripe for its appearance, even to the 
most infatuated believer in arguing the enemy out of our country. It will be understood 
that the use of the word Parnellite in this footnote, and wherever it occurs in this book, 
means the united Parliamentary party, the McCarthyites and Parnellites of to-day. By 
this name they were written and spoken of up to the division in 1889. 



53° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

bureaus ; and as soon as a newcomer planted his foot on Irish soil, invested 
by the illegal and alien administration with the authority of either of these 
offices, to perpetuate Britain's rule of spoliation, he should be at once sup- 
pressed in mercy to the Irish nation. 

Also that every satrap of Britain, carrying on and conducting her war 
of extermination in any part of the island, should be summarily removed 
from the scene of devastation. For " Britain in Ireland is as a beast 
exceeding terrible ; his feet and claws are of iron, and the rest he stamps 
upon with his feet." 

The Irishmen who promulgated these orders had the legal right to issue 
t/iem. This authority was conferred upon them by the Irish nation. 
Ireland was at this time in the throes of agony, suffering under the regime 
of two of the worst enemies that ever controlled these bureaus of 
slaughter — W. E. Forster and Thomas Burke. These men wielded the 
despotic anthority granted them by the enemy's Parliament, and most 
brutally and recklessly did they use it. It was ordered by the Irish Ad- 
ministration that these murder bureaus should be as soon as possible made 
vacant ; that this foreign murder conspiracy against the Irish nation's 
life should be deprived of its chiefs. So long as the office of the enemy's 
Governor General, or Lord Lieutenant, remained a mere representative 
position, the occupier of it would remain unnoticed, but the moment he 
assumed executive duties and assisted in the murder of the Irish people, 
this office should be also made vacant. 

This law was adopted irrespective of the individuals who assumed 
these offices of the enemy. Once the scarlet robe of Ireland's assassin 
was assumed by any man he became Ireland's destroyer, and was com- 
pelled by the nature of his office to enforce the brutal policy of the invader 
and all the horrors that followed in its train. The Irish nation did not 
war with individuals, but was determined to suppress these death-dealing 
systems established by their unscrupulous foe. 

Rightly or wrongly the National Irish Government did not think the 
time ripe for an open appeal to arms. But it was hoped that what was 
needed for a successful insurrection might be supplied by these guerrilla 
attacks, which might eventually lead up to a war for independence. 

It must have been seen by the Invincible Administration that in the 
suppressing of any of the enemy's chiefs a combat of some sort would 
probably ensue, but from the blood of brave men dying for their country 
they knew that fresh champions would spring twenty-fold to take the place 
of the slain. 

These combats it was expected would arise owing to the watchful- 
ness and vigilance of the foe, who guarded every possible place with 
armed men. 

It may be said by men who live in free and happy self-governed 
nations, enjoying peace and blessings under their country's flag, that 
this policy of the Invincible Government was very terrible. Nothing that 
Ireland could possibly do could be equal to the atrocities perpetrated on 
her by her foreign foe. By rapine and bloodshed he fastened himself on 
the soil of Ireland, and by bloodshed and oppression he maintains his 
hold. 

It is revolting to every manly sense of justice that the Invincible 
movement has not always been established in Ireland by her down-trodden 
people. Ireland must go through a bloody agony before she can throw off 
the monster that has fastened on her vitals. 

To write anything further in extenuation or explanation of this truly 
needful policy would appear as if apologizing or palliating what was both 
sacred, just, and truly lawful ; for Ireland never surrendered to any for- 
eign nation the right to make her laws. Irishmen in seeking to conciliate 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 531 

prejudiced and hostile views apologize and explain too much ; this pen 
shall try to not repeat it. 

Although the I. R. B. organization remained intact, going on with its 
fancied preparations to take the field against Britain, several of its lead- 
ing spirits in Dublin joined the new movement. Among those who joined 
the ranks of the Invincibles were some of the officers in the I. R. B. ; but 
as an organization it remained a distinct movement. 

Mistaking as the I. R. B. did the new policy, and believing that it 
was merely an attack on landlords, or other acts which took place during 
the land struggle, the I. R. B. Executive were officially opposed to it. 
And yet the moral cowards who belonged to the Parnellites have since 
tried to fasten upon the I. R. B. movement what they in their craven 
spirits meant to be odium, all the heroism, self-sacrifice, and valor of 
the military Invincibles. Their own patriotism in creating the Invinci- 
bles they shrank from, when action was once taken and the first step in 
the sanguinary drama completed. But for the Parnellites there would 
have been no Invincibles ; all the glory of that short-lived struggle rests on 
the brave men who took the field, all the disgrace and degradation on the 
statesmen who deserted and slandered them. 

The Dublin Invincibles were almost altogether composed of I. R. B. 
men, either from members already enrolled, or ex-members equally brave, 
patriotic, and self-sacrificing. In the country districts the Invincibles 
were principally composed of Provincialists, members of the suppressed 
Land League. The daring spirits of all parties embraced most eagerly 
the active policy forced upon them by the enemy, and which promised 
for their country the only possible solution at this acute crisis. 

When the brave organizers who were officially sent out by the Irish 
Executive to build up this new movement had returned to headquarters, 
the organization still progressed ; the enrolled men in Ireland spread it 
among their patriotic brethren. 

Of these devoted Irishmen, the advanced guard of the new movement, 
this history has nothing further to record. The man who organized 
Dublin was a veteran Nationalist, who, if circumstances permitted, would 
have remained to fight the men enrolled there. He did stay in Dublin 
for a while seeking results, but these were more difficult of accomplish- 
ment than those not engaged would think. He was removed from Dublin 
by orders and thenceforth took no active part in the organization, and so 
does not appear in this history. Among the brave organizers of the 
Invincibles in the country districts was a true and tried Irish Nationalist, 
although a prominent Parnellite ; to this man great credit must be given 
for his splendid endeavors to build up the movement in the provinces ; 
he did this under the very eyes of the enemy, while Forster's tyranny was 
felt in every village and cabin in Ireland. It was through no fault of his 
that the country Invincibles did not make a redder record, and by so 
doing further paralyze the foe. He was recalled from Ireland at a very 
early stage of the movement. Some of his colleagues accused him of indis- 
cretions ; those were probably only greater deeds of daring than they would 
do. Human nature is not perfect, and Irish patriots should look with 
kindly eyes on each other, and more hostile glances at the common enemy. 
One thing can be written of this brave country organizer, that if his judg- 
ment was not always perfect, his patriotism had not a single flaw; he 
believed in but one course, one pathway to freedom — he believed that like 
all struggling nationalities Ireland's duty was to smite her foe when and 
how she could. 

This brave Irishman had no connection whatever with the Phoenix 
Park incident, although it has been so mentioned, excepting so far as he, 
like all of the Invincibles, was a party to the policy of which it was the 



532 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

active exponent. From the enemy's standpoint of course such men are 
held responsible, and on that question Irish Nationalists take no issue ; 
but if the invader wants to know whom to indict for that blow struck at 
his official destroyers, he must indict the Irish nation. The enemy may 
squirm and wriggle how he may over this fact, which he knows, but dare 
not admit : the Irish nation is responsible for the glory, or the crime, 
whichever they now mean to call it. But the true pulse of the nation 
rejects the infamy of the latter term. The facts about that memorable 
event will be given in this history. This brave country organizer was 
abroad when the news of the Park event came on him with joyful surprise 
through the public press. 

The Invincibles might be likened to the forlorn hope of a storming 
party, where every man ran constant danger of instant death ; they could 
only be recruited from the best and bravest of the Irish race. They were 
not numerically great, as compared with the I. R. B., but what they lacked 
in numbers they made up in efficiency. The material of which the organi- 
zation was composed, the morale and discipline that pervaded its ranks, 
were invaluable to Ireland, if properly handled and sustained by a firm and 
courageous executive. 

It was indeed an army of lions. It were well for the Green Isle if 
those who governed it displayed more leonine courage. 

This organization did not exist outside of Ireland. The Administra- 
tion, for some motives of policy never known to the Invincibles, did not 
permit its spread to the United States. Hence Irish-Americans were com- 
pletely taken by surprise when the 6th of May incident was cabled over 
the Atlantic, which want of knowledge produced a peculiar attitude in 
some Irishmen in this country. 

One of Britain's stock arguments and charges made against Irish 
Nationalists for the past two generations has been that all physical force 
movements directed against her rule in Ireland are of foreign origin, as 
the natives so love her rule they would never dream of revolting against 
it, but that these foreigners compel them. 

This absurd statement the invader never applied to the Invincibles — 
a physical force movement, the policy of which, if put into practice, was 
not the mildest form of assailing the unscrupulous foe, and the revival of 
which they fear. 

This movement was composed of native born Irishmen in Ireland, and 
they know that its principles to-day are espoused by the great mass of the 
devoted sons of that nation. 

From this want of knowledge of the new organization in other coun- 
tries, a rumor was industriously spread abroad that this movement was 
hostile to the leaders of the suppressed Land League and the principles 
of Mr. Parnell. 

Possibly the idea which Mr. Parnell expressed on board the Scythia 
when interviewed on his voyage to the United States, namely : that Ire- 
land needed two organizations, one secret and the other public, was in the 
minds of the Invincible Administration when it permitted this false state- 
ment to be circulated. All thinking Irishmen will agree with Mr. Parnell 
as to the necessity of two such organizations, but they should be both 
national and true to Ireland. It should not be considered the duty of 
the public movement to denounce the active work of the secret one, 
especially if both movements had one and the same executive. To call 
this policy of falsehood and duplicity good statesmanship, calculated to 
deceive the enemy, is too infamous for any honorable man to admit. 

The criticisms and condemnation of the Invincible movement by peo- 
ple who knew nothing of its origin or the circumstances which created it, 
show what a fearful influence tending to the destruction of all healthy 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 533 

Irish national life is controlled by the pernicious teaching of British 
literature. 

Irishmen who agree in this condemnation seldom think of the dark stain 
on Irish morals placed there by the public teaching of the Provincialists, 
that "the end justifies the means "; that it is right to compound a felony by 
trying to come to terms with the invader. 

British rule in Ireland in any shape or form is a felony, and as such is 
one of the most infamous and heinous of moral crimes ; a band of bur- 
glars have burst into Ireland's mansion and gorged themselves with plunder 
of every kind, and when they fear that their booty is endangered they 
never for an instant hesitate to add assassination to their numerous crimes. 
From O'Connell's time to this day the Provincialists have been asso- 
ciating with foreign criminals, doing evil that good may result. Perhaps 
they would explain their conduct as Louis Napoleon did for shooting 
down the French people on the Parisian boulevards : "Je suis sorti de la 
le'galite pour rentrir dans le droit." 

Irish Provincialists try to convince themselves that it is expedient to 
attempt to compromise with the foreign banditti, and by recognizing 
their right to carry on centuries of pillage and murder, receive back for 
Ireland some share of the captured booty. But vain and useless have 
been all their endeavors, even though they publicly stain themselves with 
the crime of compounding felony — the felon will not restore the smallest 
moiety of his plunder. He still continues and will continue, unless 
destroyed by force, to debauch and destroy his victims. 

All attempts at this period to bring about a peaceful solution (which 
was rank folly to try) were stopped by Mr. Gladstone, who forced the 
Provincialists into more desperate and daring channels. 

Men of the compromise school talk of educating the enemy's popula- 
tion with good results for Ireland. Repeating the truism, Knowledge is 
power, and as expressed by a great American : 

"Of course knowledge is power, we all know that ; but mere knowl- 
edge is not power, it is simple possibility." 

" Action is power, and its highest manifestation is action with knowledge. 
'Tis not the man nor the nation who knows most, but the one who does 
best, that wins." 

With the determination of taking instant action against the British, 
the Invincible movement was created, but it is one thing to decree a cer- 
tain policy and another and totally different thing to put that policy into 
practical shape, and demonstrate, by accomplished deeds, the wisdom of 
the council chamber. Had open insurrection been decided on, it might 
have been easier commenced than what might seem a simpler programme. 
The Invincible organization was now established in Ireland, spreading 
over Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught, with an organized 
authority behind it, which, as its history progresses, will be seen to gradu- 
ally melt away, leaving the devoted men in the gap exposed not alone to 
almost certain death, but what has been to the individual men, as it has 
been to the Irish nation, a base and cowardly attempt to fasten crime 
upon the prostrate and bleeding land, an attempt to stain their honor 
and the honor of Ireland by the unscrupulous foe — but, O God of Truth 
and Justice, by whom has he been aided and supported in these villainous 
calumnies ? 

British interests and lust of conquest compel the leaders of that country 
to minimize all actual hostility to her rule in Ireland. She tries at all 
times, through the multitudinous ramifications of her literature, to repre- 
sent Ireland before mankind as a part of the British Kingdom, and in all 
her official documents she uses this expression as if 'twere an established 
fact. She ignores the geographical position of the island, and would, if 



534 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

she could, alter the work of the Creator. She speaks of the Irish nation 
as she does of Scotland, the northern part of the island of Britain, and 
tries to confuse mankind as to the actual status of Ireland by the parrot 
cry, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; thus dividing the island of 
Britain into three distinct provinces and making the island of Ireland 
appear as a fourth. 

But Ireland, in spite of all these British assertions, remains, as she came 
from the hands of the Creator, a distinct nation. She has her own four 
provinces as Britain has three. Britain's three provinces constitute what 
they call the United Kingdom, of which United Kingdom Ireland forms 
NO part, neither geographically, nor racially, only as the chained prisoner 
is united to his dungeon. These two islands are in a continued state of 
the most horrible warfare. The blows dealt by the British invader are 
incessant ; they are answered back by prostrate Ireland only in a sporadic 
and intermittent manner. Circumstances have so far favored the invader 
that resistance of a physical nature has not been permanent. But although 
Irish arms are sheathed by false teaching or removed by the enemy, fresh 
weapons are procured and the nation strikes again to show the world she 
is not conquered. The Punic wars of the Romans and Carthaginians 
pale into insignificance before the endurance and length of this war of 
seven centuries. But the island of Ireland is yet to be conquered. She 
stands before mankind determined to be mistress of her own destinies. 
She is bleeding from every pore ; many of the bravest of her warrior sons 
dead on the scaffold, in the enemy's dungeons, or in exile. But still the 
fight goes on. Irish patriots may be again and again blotted out in blood, 
but Irish nationality never. It still lives on ; its source of life is as 
uncontrollable as the decrees of the great Creator of all nations. 

At this time in Ireland there were several small country organizations 
that sprang into existence in each locality, by the pressure of the times 
and the atrocities of some tyrant of the neighborhood. The small bodies 
of persecuted men have borne various appellations — Whiteboys, Moon- 
lighters, and such names. These bodies are the irregular soldiers of the 
Irish nation. They are the guerrillas that sometimes portend the pres- 
ence of an army in preparation. They are Ireland's Francs-tirezirs. They 
disappear and arise as the enemy applies the screw of torture, or as it suits 
his policy for the moment to ease the agony. While they are representa- 
tive of the hostility of the Irish nation to the foreign invader, they have 
no representative mandate for their existence but Irish sympathy in their 
success as opposed to the enemy ; but very often this hatred of theirs 
through ignorance is led into wrong channels, and vengeance has often 
been wreaked on their own unhappy countrymen who, by poverty and 
the degradation of slavery, violate these men's local combinations. This 
condition of things is the direct creation of the bloodstained invader.* 

With these movements, British ministers, British interests, and British 
public opinion have tried to class the Invincibles. Their published 
account of the movement as to-day given to the world, and which they 
wish should go into the domain of history, is that of a small, irregular 
band of desperate men in Dublin City, under the control and guidance of 

* It is twelve months since this was written, and at this date, December, 1888, the 
enemy, by his present proceedings in London, further corroborates the writer's statement, 
by a fresh attempt to confound the irregular Irish guerrillas and their local land troubles 
with the Invincible organization. The exhibition in the London law courts of bailiffs and 
tenants, against whom rural combinations, having no other remedy, were compelled to take 
action, showed the wretched instruments of foreign plunder, and their grasping sordidness, 
the direct result of the enforced poverty created by Britain's rule in the country. This is 
a further attempt by the unscrupulous enemy to mislead and confound mankind as to the 
real issue between the Irish and British nations. Interspersed with these victims of British 
tyranny are to be found the usual accompaniments of all Irish investigation in the enemy's 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 535 

the unfortunate James Carey, a man who was only for a short time a sub- 
officer of the organization.* 

These irregular country movements had no affiliation whatever with the 
Invincible organization, nor were they in any manner subject to the con- 
trol of any central authority but their own local leaders. 

The Invincible organization was militant Ireland, the nation prepared 
to smite the foe. It held a higher mandate for its existence than any 
recent Irish movement at its birth. It was created by lawful and 
organized authority ; its principles and its laws were those given to- 
it by its Parnellite creators, who were the legal government of the Irish 
nation. 

As long as the cry Vox populi, vox Dei is believed in by mankind, the- 
Invincible organization must remain on record as the answer of the Irish 
nation to the suppression of the Land League. 

There were, no doubt, many men in the Parnellite ranks in 1881 who 
would have opposed, if consulted, the formation of any such organization,, 
but they were not among the active and patriotic section. But even in. 
the fulfillment of their own programme, if they had any during this epoch 
of blood and agony, by their abject cowardice and fright they effaced 
themselves from all participation or assistance in the direction of Irish 
affairs. These men, who were puny weaklings in the crisis, became 
blatant and vituperative when all danger was past. Some few of the 
brainier and more patriotic of the Parnellite leaders and members of the 
government received severe private criticism from some of these men who, 
from their well-known patriotism and devotion to Ireland, were suspected 
by these timid and nerveless Provincialists as the authors of this war of 
reprisals. There is no doubt that this section of the Parnellites are sincere 
believers in Ireland's destiny to be a province of the British Empire ; these 
people talk of British murders in Ireland as a necessity forced upon the 
invaders by Irish resistance, and appear to think that any blow struck by 
their own oppressed country is a crime, and possibly, in this narrow and 
unpatriotic spirit, they may be sincere in their denunciation of the Invin- 
cibles in Dublin, as they are sincere slaves and British flunkies. 

But this does not remove from their shoulders one iota of the respon- 
sibility attending the creation of this active movement ; if they had 
authority at headquarters they should have been there to give the Pro- 
vincialist organization their services. But to say in the face of facts 
around them, of circumstances that could not have been hidden from the 
most stupid, if they had not absolute information they must have had 
more than a shrewd suspicion that the Irish Invincibles and their own 
movement was the Land League in a more active form. If this is not so, 
these men must have less than the ordinary perception belonging to natural 
intelligence. 

This history cannot be too emphatic in stating that the Parnellism of 

courts, namely perjurers, wretched creatures who would sell their souls for gold. The 
illustrated London papers are filled each week with caricature portraits of these unfortu- 
nate people, brought to desperation by tyranny. The condition of these peasants is the 
direct offspring of British rule, which aims at changing the manly and intelligent Irish 
Celt, if possible, by abject poverty and relentless cruelties, into an ignorant savage, further 
pursued by this cold-blooded and sneering exhibition, exposing for ridicule and abhorrence 
the production and result of their own infamous and degrading system, the most hellish 
ever conceived by demons. 

* This prevailing opinion of the small number of men enrolled in the ranks of the 
Invincibles is further indorsed by Sir Charles Russell, M. P., in his speech before the 
London Commission, when he computes that organization as a body of thirty men. This 
speech of the great British Radical corroborates the writer's opinions as to the anxiety of 
both wings of the enemy to represent this hostile movement not only as criminal but 
contemptible. 



53 6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

that epoch and the Invincibles were one and the same in actual fact ; the 
policy of this active movement, its authority, its armament (such as it was) 
sprung from the organized ranks of " legal agitation." 

These men, who now so wantonly denounce the Invincibles (thereby 
aiding the enemy in crushing out all manly resistance to his rule), if not 
members, some of them most certainly must have known or suspected the 
source from which it sprung. If its policy, as these moral cowards state, 
was damnable, then the men who created it and stood afar from contact 
or risk, unlike the brave workers, must be classified by the same title. If 
the foul and villainous name of assassins is applicable to the manly and 
patriotic Irish soldiers who suppressed the enemy's secretaries, chiefs of the 
Castle conspirators, whose official hands were freshly red with the blood 
of the children massacred in Ballina the very day before ; if this black 
name of degradation is applicable to these self-sacrificing Irishmen who 
slew the enemy's chieftains, how much more could it be applied and 
with thundering emphasis to those among the very highest of the Pro- 
vincialists, from out of whose ranks the Invincible organization sprang 
into being ! 

The actions and principles of the Invincibles were either right or 
wrong; there can be no medium term. If wrong, it should never have been 
created and the name of Ireland stained with crime ; its creators by their 
own showing then are criminals ; if right, it should be manfully upheld in 
the face of day, and no man should blush to own affiliation ; on the con- 
trary, he should be proud to say, and proud to leave it as an honored 
inheritance to his children — " I was an Invincible."* 

But these weak-nerved Provincialists are heaping slime upon their own 
names by these vile slanders. Circumstances and expediency — using these 
coward apologies — might compel silence, but no personal danger or politi- 
cal exigencies can explain away these denunciations or the black and 
damning stain they would fasten on the name of Ireland. The present 
writer upholds the action of those then patriotic Provincialists, who when 
the hour struck, bravely stepped from the ranks of that delusive folly 
*' legal agitation " and called into being a movement to destroy the foe ; 
to wipe out of existence some of the vampires battening on the heart of 
their bleeding and prostrate country. Posterity will honor the action of 
these men, and in after ages the names of those who are now slandered 
-will be enrolled on the list of Ireland's pure and devoted patriots. Nine- 
tenths of the Irish race to-day, at home and abroad, indorse the lesson 
taught Britain by the " suppression " of her secretaries ; and if Ireland 
^strikes another blow, the public opinion of mankind will go with the weak 
sbut gallant nation whose vitality is immortal. 

So horrified and maddened were all Irishmen, and especially several of 
the Provincialist leaders, at the brutal conduct of Gladstone's Chief Secre- 
tary in Ireland — his callous outrage of every Irish feeling — that a short time 
before the creation of the Invincible organization one of the leaders of the 

Provincialists, Y , then and now a Parnellite memoer of the enemy s 

Parliament, volunteered to sacrifice his life by going to Ireland and 
publicly suppressing Forster ; he was overruled by those of his colleagues 
to whom he made the proposition ; from this came the policy afterward 
adopted by the new movement. This then brave and gallant gentleman, 

* Since this was written one of these gentlemen has had the courage of his convictions. 
In the city of Troy, N. Y., during the American political campaign of 1888, an Irishman, 
and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, addressing a public meeting, openly avowed 
his sympathy with the Irish Invincible movement. He there publicly declared that not 
only had he been a member of that organization, but that he was the purchaser of the 
irregular weapons of warfare used by the Invincibles in the Phcenix Park, Dublin. Owing 
to the prevarication and timidity, if not moral cowardice, on the part of the leaders of the 
movement, this public announcement of his created a profound impression on his hearers. 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 537 

who volunteered to undertake this mission, remains to this day one of the 
leaders of the Provincialist organization.* 

In writing of the few scenes of action taken by the Invincibles in 
Dublin, it will be impossible to do so without appearing to give undue 
importance to one or two central figures. The present writer would 
rather not have this task, but owing to the slanders and stigmas sought to 
be fastened on a great principle and a heroic policy, he feels it is a sacred 
trust and an imperative duty to his mangled motherland that the true 
record of a short incident — but a most determined and desperate one — 
during Britain's war of extermination should be truthfully and plainly 
recorded ; so that Irishmen who may feel the necessity of some similar 
movement to try to grapple with th« hideous monster who is strangling 
their beloved country, should not have their minds poisoned by the 
enemy's lying and distorted statements, and the villainous conclusions 
which his press, led off by the London murder organ, would instill into their 
patriotic minds. 

The Invincible Administration held a final council of war in a small 
foreign town, and commissioned three men to take charge of the conduct 
of affairs. These high officials were to consult with other members of the 
Executive from time to time, as circumstances and convenience would 
permit, one of the trio having ready access to these gentlemen, as his 
Provincial duties brought them together. Two of the gentlemen appointed 
to conduct active operations were not Provincialists ; they were the only 
men not agitators in the Administration. The rest of the Executive were 
high officials of the Parnellite Irish Gover?iment. 

One of these non-agitators was a man who had a reputation for desperate 
valor, but soon disappeared from the scene. He went on a mission to 
Ireland with the object of visiting the various Invincible bands over the 
four provinces of that nation, but did not proceed further on his journey 
than Dublin. 

There he saw the sub-officers in charge of the Dublin organization, 
after which he returned to the city which shall be designated here as 
headquarters. His subsequent duties were of a consultative nature. 
This gentleman will be designated as J . 

The other non-Provincialist was a brave and gallant gentleman. He 
was a man of superior attainments. This valiant soldier's services were 
unfortunately lost to the movement by illness at a very early stage in its 
career. 

The third member of the trio in charge at headquarters might be 
called the mouthpiece of the Executive. He was subsequently their 
medium of communication in great measure with the man who afterward 
took charge of active work in Dublin, but who at this period was not a 
member of the organization. This third member of the trio was in the 
confidence of all the leaders and of the Administration. He occupied a 

* Since this book was written the Provincialists have split into two factions. One 
section continue to follow the leadership of Mr. Parnell, and the other and larger part of 
the Parliamentary party have chosen Mr. McCarthy for their leader. With the acted 
falsehood which haunts these movements, trying to reform foreign rule in Ireland, the 
last mentioned faction call themselves Nationalists. They do not mean British Nationalists, 
as their avowed policy shows them to be. But to further deceive the patriotic, impulsive, 
and unthinking masses of the Irish people, these men, openly and really organized to per- 
petuate foreign rule in Ireland and to continue the flag of the invader in the island as 
the emblem of that foreign rule — these men have the audacity to come before the world 
with the unblushing falsehood of calling themselves Irish Nationalists. The party spoken 
of in this book as Parnellite means the whole united Provincial movement as it was at the 
epoch written abouf. The Invincible written about here as a member of the enemy's 
Parliament, is now a prominent member of the McCarthyite faction, and still writes 
M. P. after his name. 



53 8 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

very responsible position, and will frequently appear in the course of this 
history ; for intelligent following of events he will be named Q . 

Q was a gentleman who had been in earlier years a member of 

the National ranks, but when he espoused Provincialism (so far as official 
connection went) his colleagues deposed him. This was an error, if they 
meant by this that his sentiments had changed. He remained in heart an 
ardent Nationalist and an unflinching advocate of stern measures against 
Ireland's enemy. The important affairs placed unreservedly in his hands 

by the Executive of the Invincibles proved their confidence in Q as 

a man deserving of much trust. Had he been a dishonorable man he had 
the power of doing serious harm, which would have led to disastrous con- 
sequences. But, although fully deserving the confidence reposed in him, 
loyal and patriotic to Ireland, he was totally unsuited for so responsible a 
position. Under the direct supervision of the able men composing the 
Executive he would have been invaluable, but left at times with uncon- 
trolled authority, he had not the natural resources to be equal to the 
demand made upon his intelligence and judgment. He was a persevering 
organizer, for although he did not leave the town where headquarters 
was situated, he enrolled in the ranks of the Invincibles a number of good 
men. Of these, and one of his earliest recruits, was a patriotic gentleman 
of polished and courtly manners and decidedly handsome exterior, who 
will be named R . 

Q and J , acting under instructions from the Executive, con- 
sulted together, and decided on getting R to purchase certain articles 

to send to Dublin. This mission was executed faithfully, but were it not 

that R knew that the exigencies of the time compelled his country to 

use these as irregular weapons of war, there was nothing unusual in these 
purchases, as they were such as professional gentlemen require to get from 
time to time. True, the number was more than a single purchaser would 
at any one time buy, which R — r — explained by saying he was going to 
the colonies. This incident, we have been informed, has been given to 
the world by this gentleman himself. With the exception of looking after 

the Provincialist organ on one occasion, R did no other duties for 

the organization. And this fact shows the want of judgment at Invin- 
cible headquarters, for R was a man of considerable ability and 

would have been able to have given the cause very valuable services. 
The Parnellite newspaper United Ireland had been seized by the enemy's 
police in Dublin; the invader was determined, so far as he had the power, 
to suppress every public expression of Irish opinion. This official Provin- 
cial journal was printed and published surreptitiously, and on the occasion 

when R went to look after the arrival of a large parcel of one issue, 

the enemy, on the qui vive, had made a swoop and captured the newspapers, 
which made his journey abortive. 

R remained at headquarters for a few weeks after making the 

aforesaid purchases, during which time he enrolled two men into the In- 
vincible ranks. He was then sent to a foreign resort. He spent in this 
European retreat several months, living quietly at a hotel. During his 

stay at this foreign hotel, Q complained very bitterly of R 's 

indiscretion in corresponding with him and others, but it is not to be sup- 
posed that this was R 's fault ; he was neglected in his retreat and 

compelled to write these letters. Some time after the Park incident a 
high official of the Executive sent the gentleman who organized part of 

Ireland already mentioned, with certain orders to R , who immediately 

left for the New World. 

Why R was not in the first instance sent out of Europe, instead 

of being kept for months idle in a European resort, or why he was sent 
away at all for the mere making of these purchases, and not retained 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 539 

for some valuable active work, is one of the unexplained peculiar acts of 
the statesmen belonging to the Invincible Administration. 

Another melodramatic act was the extraordinary manner in which 

R 's purchases were sent to Dublin. With the exception of two articles 

retained by Q , those weapons were speedily forwarded to that city. 

The peculiarity of the sending of these^ weapons to Dublin caused a 
great deal of uneasiness, dissatisfaction, and want of confidence among 
certain leading Invincibles in that city. A lady was Chosen as messenger ; 
there was no necessity whatever for this ; the parcel could be easily brought 
into that city by the proper person to carry such articles — a man. There 
was nothing very extraordinary or unusual for a man carrying out so sim- 
ple a transaction. It however reflects the highest credit for bravery, devo- 
tion, and patriotism on the lady, but it also shows poor judgment on the 
part of whoever suggested such a messenger. 

Unless the enemy was in possession of specific information, travelers 
entering Ireland were not searched. And if the enemy was in possession 
of any knowledge concerning her errand, the lady would suffer in their 
hands the same vengeance as a man. The only guarantee of bringing into 
Dublin safely any article which the Castle conspirators had prohibited, 
would be the secrecy of the transa< Uon, not the sex of the messenger. If 
the invader's myrmidons were in possession of any information, this 
devoted Irishwoman would suffer at their hands the same outrages as they 
would have dealt to one of the opposite sex. Think, then, of the fearful 
risk this brave lady ran, and the terrible consequences to which she was 
exposed ! 

It was cruel and unmanly to send a lady with such articles, and it was 
poor judgment on the part of some of the leaders. Ladies are very often 
invaluable emissaries in revolutionary times ; but carrying weapons, 
unless under special cases of exceptional urgency — which did not arise 
here — is not part of those duties ; as well ask ladies to use the weapons. 

This matter has been given to the world before, in part, as a something 
which added luster to this phase of Ireland's struggle against the foreigner's 
murder conspiracy. It proved the devotion to country of a brave Irish- 
woman, and at the same time displayed paucity of brains in those who 
ordered it. As this book is written for Irish Nationalists to read, it is 
important as a lesson to show where the great deficiency has always been 
in Ireland's struggle: the absence through moral cowardice of the brainy 
men at the council chamber. It is very far from the writer's wish to criti- 
cise or be severe on those who endeavored to serve their land at this 

crisis. Ireland owes these patriotic men a deep debt of gratitude. Q 

and J were giving their best services in the cause ; it is a pity that 

that curse to Irish struggles, called Prudence- -which is often more per- 
sonal \han National — kept other and far abler men from supervising and 
controlling affairs in person. The members of the Parnellite Irish National 
Government should have seen that the momentous issue, which by their 
order Ireland was committed to, should be carried out with the greatest 
wisdom that matured judgments could bring to the nation's service. 

J , who was a man of great dash and bravery, far more suited for 

the field than the council, was, it is said, an important factor in influencing 
the Parnellite Administration to change their policy to one of action 
against the foe, and it is very probable that the title given the new move- 
ment was of his creation. But although this may be true, the Parnellite 
member of the British Parliament, as already mentioned, had made his 
offer of personal sacrifice to suppress the then much hated chief of the 

Dublin Castle murder bureau before J 's arrival on the scene. J 

had one or two friends among the leading Parnellites, and his offer of 
service was no doubt the last straw that turned the wavering balance. 



54° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Soon after the delivery of the parcel sent by the lady, J visited 

Dublin, and had one or two interviews with the local council in that city. 
His intrepidity or valor had no opportunity to be placed on record. There 
was some expressed dissatisfaction at this among his Parnellite colleagues 
on his return, but the present writer thinks unjustly. Whatever may be 
said of this gallant gentleman's judgment, his valor or daring is unques- 
tioned. 

About this time a man who will be called K was enrolled in the 

Invincible organization. He had a short time previous become acquainted 

with Q and R , and sharing the same Irish sentiments in this 

crisis a bond of sympathy and companionship ripened very rapidly. 

At one of these meetings Q and R approached K , and 

asked him to join the new movement, giving him a shadowy outline of its 

nature. They both knew K was a firm believer in Irish national 

independence, and from his expressed sentiments during their short 
acquaintance and from his antecedents, they considered he would make 

an available recruit. K , from his early association with the I. R. B. 

and mixing among Nationalists and Provincialists, felt satisfied that the 
party of action had some new movement in preparation, which would 
speedily develop itself, but was completely astounded and surprised to 
learn the source from which this new attack was to spring on the enemy. 
To be approached by a prominent and trusted Parnellite official to join 
an active movement of the most extreme kind, in the very chamber where 
Parliamentary members sat to consult and arrange " legal and constitu- 
tional agitation," staggered and astonished K . He felt at the moment 

as if a veil had fallen from his eyes, and that the policy of shaming the 
invader out of Ireland was only a huge sham ; that physical resistance to 
tyranny was the undercurrent of this gigantic movement. A strange whirl 
of emotions and thoughts was flying through his brain undreamt of by his 
friends present. When he collected his thoughts he asked his querists if 
the gallant soldier (already spoken of as one of the trio appointed by the 

Irish Government to conduct affairs, and whom we will call F ) had 

any knowledge of the new National organization ? He was told that 

F was already enrolled in its ranks. K told his friends that he 

would give the subject his most serious consideration, and appointed the 
following day to meet them with his answer in the same Parnellite chamber 
where this interview took place. 

After parting with his companions K began to speculate on the 

unlooked for, undreamt of news which he had just heard. Could it be 
possible, he asked himself, that the Parnellite movement, which he and 
his brother Nationalists looked on as political folly, had been all the time 
a secret National movement ? If so, this accounted for the extraordinary 
conduct of the Irish-American National leaders in supporting Mr. Parnell, 
which was an unexplained puzzle to the men in the gap. On a little 
reflection he dismissed this idea and concluded that the acute crisis had 
forced the Parnellite government to take action in spite of themselves, 
but still he naturally wondered at the very extreme policy adopted. 

Again he thought, could it be that Q , although a Parnellite official, 

was acting without the knowledge of the Parliamentary Administration ? 
But on reflection he felt satisfied this was impossible ; the intercourse 

K had had at this time with the Parnellites convinced him that those 

in legal control and power must have given their sanction and authority 

or Q would never dare to broach so bold a policy in the sanctum of 

their chambers. With these conflicting thoughts rushing through his mind, 
K sought his old National friend F . 

F and K had been friends for twenty years. They had been 

associated in revolutionary projects and some events which promised 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 541 

serious results during the '65 and '67 epochs. F , as already men- 
tioned, was a man of ripened experience and judgment, and K had 

every confidence in his patriotism and good sense, and sought him for 
information and advice as to joining the new National movement. He 
told F of the interview in the Parnellite chambers and of the conflict- 
ing and extraordinary emotions which it called up. F , who, as he then 

learned, was a member of the new Invincible Administration, gave K 

a full and detailed history of the National undertaking, which was the 
creation of those who held the Irish reins of office with the full sanction 

and voice of the Irish race. Everything told K at that interview 

was in the fullness of time corroborated by the course of events, the 

history of which is given in these pages. F impressed upon his 

friend the necessity of locking in his own breast at that period the full 
and exhaustive statement of Irish affairs placed before him, and especially 
of leaving Q under the impression he knew no more than any ordi- 
nary recruit to the National ranks. 

K attended next day to keep his appointment at the Parnellite 

chambers, where R , who was deputed by Q , initiated and enrolled 

him a soldier of Ireland's Invincibles. There in the Parnellite Parlia- 
mentary chamber, the temple of " legal agitation," K received and 

accepted (not for the first time) the obligation of an Irish revolutionary 
soldier. 

When this initiation had concluded R left the chamber, and Q 

entering told the newly enrolled disciple that he wished him to initiate a 

new member, mentioning X , a gentleman with whom K had a 

slight acquaintance. After the revelation given him by F nothing 

now astonished him, or otherwise he would have indeed wondered at the 

new recruit. X was a gentleman of social standing, good means, and 

highly honorable reputation, a prominent Parnellite, and to the outer 
world a firm believer in " moral suasion." In the same Parliamentary 

chamber where he himself was initiated K repeated the ceremony to 

the new recruit. This newly enrolled Invincible was a gentleman of 
superior social position, a man of education, and undoubtedly a sincere 

and faithful Irishman. At this time of writing (1887) X , like 

many an ex-Invincible, is a Parnellite ?netnber of the British Parlia- 
ment* 

A short time after these initiations R left for the continent 

(Europe) as already stated, and so dropped out of the Invincible move- 
ment, through no wish of his own, as he does out of this history. 

Through the arrest of one of the Invincibles in Dublin by the enemy's 
chief, Forster — who caused the haphazard arrests under the vague charge 
of a suspect — K was sent to Dublin. 

This Irishman imprisoned by the Castle conspirators was a brave, im- 
pulsive, and dashing Nationalist ; he had been associated with patriotic 
movements all his life. His scorn of the enemy's myrmidons was openly 
expressed, and there were few people who knew him that were not aware 
of his sentiments. 

K 's duty in Dublin during this visit was the filling of the office 

on the local council left vacant by the recent arrest, which he did by the 
promotion of one of the noblest patriots to whom suffering Ireland has 
ever given birth ; a loyal young hero who sealed his devotion to his 
motherland by the sacrifice of his young life. 

On K— — 's return to headquarters he made an official report of 
affairs in Dublin and had a series of interviews with his friend on the 
Directory. 

* And it also may be written that he is at this date (1891) a McCarthyite member of 
the British Parliament. 



542 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

In discussing the aspect of the cause, the Directory decided that some 
man should be sent to take supreme control of the organization in Dublin, 
and hold the responsible direction of whatever operations the patriots 
could take against the invaders. Although a number of volunteers could 
be easily procured to take this post of honor and danger, the difficulty was 
to get a man whose business habits and surroundings would leave him 
free to move without drawing on him suspicion from some of the hydra- 
headed claws of the monster that ravaged Ireland. 

At the meeting of the Directory F said that he knew an Invinci- 
ble, a revolutionary comrade of former days, who, he was sure, would 
serve his country at this crisis, and whose business was of that nature 
which would permit him to move freely through Ireland without a shadow 
of suspicion from the foe. But there were important reasons why he felt 
disinclined to mention this subject to his friend, or ask him to accept so 
dangerous a position. 

The Directory overruled F 's hesitation, and the proposition was 

put to K . He accepted the responsibility on condition of receiving 

full control of operations, in no way hampered by either council or Direc- 
tory, and that the Administration would promise to give him loyal and 

stanch support in all undertakings. Q conveyed to him officially 

and F privately that all his demands would receive due attention and 

prompt support from the Invincible Executive. 

A few weeks after K *s appointment to take command of the 

Dublin Invincibles F was seized with a dangerous illness, and on his 

convalescence he went abroad to a foreign watering place to recruit his 
health, and at this critical time Ireland was deprived of the services of 
this gallant gentleman and valiant soldier. 

All this time the enemy's war of extermination went on ; every day the 
prisons received some fresh victims. The hideous devil fish that polluted 
Ireland by his presence was putting forth every one of his monster tentacles 
to suppress and crush out the smallest spark of national life. The mas- 
sacre of the Irish women in Belmullet was followed up by the incarcera- 
tion of Irish ladies, and every day brought with it some new outrage to 
irritate and madden the already enraged Irish heart. A spark would have 
set Ireland in a blaze of revolution, but the leaders suppressed these 
smoldering fires, believing it would be insanity to attempt open warfare. 
Yet the enemy was depopulating the country quicker and with vaster 
destruction, himself escaping all the time unscathed, than if he were using 
cannon and musketry on the ranks of revolution. The British foe was 
thoroughly on the alert, no precaution was omitted ; he was not to be taken 
by surprise. Forsterwas carefully guarded by armed men ; this was done 
as quietly as possible, so as not to alarm the public mind. The enemy 
had a vague suspicion some attack was meditated by the Irish ; but of the 
nature of this, or what was the strength of the national movement in 
Ireland, was all speculation. Some British alarmists exaggerated this in 
the eyes of the enemy's government. This class was principally composed 
of Irish rebels and traitors, Orangemen, landlords, and that slavish crowd, 
who are as ferocious as they are cowardly, like the pillars of the settlers' 
Parliament in College Green, the sanguinary and brutal yeomen of '98. 
Others laughed to scorn the idea that the Irish worm would turn ; they 
believed slavery was so inoculated into the Irish soul that there might 
be " legal " protestations and a few country outrages on each other, but an 
attack on any sanctified British official, or a " rising," as some hinted at, 
would be to confer on Irishmen a character for daring in their own cause 
that these men considered preposterous. They ought, but for British 
stupidity, to be strengthened in these opinions by the number of threaten- 
ing letters sent Mr. Forster, the offspring of puny minds filled with folly 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 543 

and ignorance ; men who commit these absurdities have no intention of 
following up their threats. A trumpery package containing some kind of 
explosive was included in the mail of this hated British despot. The 
action of those blundering people seriously alarmed the object of 
these fierce menaces, and the enemy was armed cap-a-pie to meet all 
assaults. 

The care taken of Forster even when in his own country was very little 

relaxed. An incident that corroborated this occurred to K a short 

time before he assumed command in Dublin. On one night he was 
a visitor to the gallery of the British Commons, a place he occasionally 
went to when he had leisure and opportunity. Upon this occasion he was 
anxious to meet one of the members of Parliament then in the House, 
and leaving at a late hour, when the debate was growing tedious, he walked 
up and down before the building from Westminster Hall to the members' 
entrance. Standing gazing at that magnificent poem in stone, the old and 
historic hall, he was accosted by an elderly gentleman, who, he was after- 
ward told by the policeman on duty, was the London Times reporter in 
the House of Commons. This gentleman was apparently a great ad- 
mirer of ancient and mediaeval architecture. He spoke with an air and 
tone of a cognoscenti as he compared the differences between the modern 
buildings, the Houses of Parliament and the ancient Hall of Westminster ; 
he rambled on in a pleasing style about York Minster and other ancient 
English Cathedrals, a subject which he evidently studied with much in- 
terest. As soon as this gentleman had exhausted the subject to his own 

satisfaction he entered the House. Then K walked down to the 

members' entrance nearer the river ; he had proceeded a few paces up 
that narrow passage when he came face to face with W. E. Forster ; as 
soon as the British secretary saw the stranger advancing toward him 
(which must have been a usual event, else why should K be per- 
mitted to enter ?) his whole manner denoted fright and nervous excite- 
ment ; his face grew instantly pale, as if he was about to swoon ; he 
hurriedly and in a twitching manner placed the dispatch box he _ was 
carrying before him to shield his person (conscience makes cowards 

of us all). All this nervous excitement was observed by K , who, as 

he passed by, rapidly turned upon his heel and followed Forster, im- 
pelled by motives of curiosity to see how the adventure would end. The 
idea how easily this tyrant could at that very moment be shot flashed like 

lightning through K 's brain. But K had no such mission ; his 

business to the House that evening was of a totally different nature ; he 
had no weapon on his person, even if he felt inclined to lay low the 
merciless despot who was trying to destroy his country, and who has a no 
less brutal successor to-day (1887) in Ireland. 

As Forster emerged from the passage into the open air, followed at a 

little distance by K , who overheard the Chief Secretary speak a few 

hurried harsh words to the policeman on duty, although he did not catch 

the words, K felt certain that their import was in some way relative 

to himself. In an instant Forster was surrounded by several men in 
civilian clothes, who seemed to spring out of all sorts of corners ; these 

men K took to be Forster's London guard, but this night they did not 

display unusual vigilance. 

K related this adventure to some prominent Provincialists. It 

was convincing proof that, whatever doubts were in the mind of the 
enemy's government, their Irish Chief Secretary was alarmed for his own 
personal safety. 

As soon as K had arranged some private business matters, his 

ostensible reasons for visiting Dublin, he assumed command of the 
Invincibles in that city. He this time had to bring with him an official 



544 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

document, his commission from his government, which when read f(Jr the 
local council was speedily destroyed.* 

The Invincibles with whom K at first came into immediate asso- 
ciation were the Dublin Council. This council was composed of four 
men, each of whom controlled a number of sub-officers, and these again 
had under their immediate command the rank and file of the organiza- 
tion in the Irish metropolis. 

The new office created in Dublin by the Executive removed from this 
council all executive duties, so far as any decisions in the direction of 
active work which had hitherto been under their control were concerned. 
This responsibility was now deposited with the new officer, who had sole 
charge of the direction and guidance of all plans, the carrying out of 
which was left to his own judgment. But as all details of any attack upon 
the enemy should be intrusted to the patriotic men who composed this 
council, and who had to transmit all orders to their sub-officers, which 
again had to be conveyed to the Invincible soldiers, the principal advan- 
tage in this change was that the unity in all plans of assault now centered 
in a single authority, and also the knowledge that the Invincible govern- 
ment was directly represented by the presence of their new officer, which 
gave additional strength and esprit du corps to the Dublin organization. 
This feeling animated the whole movement irrespective of the merits of 
the man sent to take charge, for they felt confident that the Executive was 
working with them by its representative, and that all responsibility for 
further failures, should these be repeated, would rest upon other shoulders. 

The officers that composed this council will be designated as L , 

M , O , and the fourth was the unfortunate James Carey. The 

late chairman of this council was the " suspect " arrested by the enemy, 

N . The first duty of this council was to organize themselves, and 

although their new captain superseded the former duties of the chairman, 
it was necessary to appoint a successor to the Invincible whom the foe 
had in his toils. 

Of the four men composing this council M was a man of more 

force of character, and more proficient in revolutionary knowledge than 
his colleagues. He was a respectable mechanic, and used to the control 
of men. He was also an officer in the I. R. B., and a stanch and active 
Irish Nationalist from his earliest years. Although a man of but moderate 
education, he was possessed of sound judgment and knew not the name 
of fear. He has since died on the scaffold for Ireland. 

* All correspondence which was necessary during the Invincible epoch was destroyed 
as soon as read. The greatest care was of course taken to have the smallest possible 
written orders or instructions issued ; most of these passed between the officer in command 
and his government. The hedging round with every secrecy possible, even of those 
engaged in this active movement from each other, was considered an important matter of 
discipline. And yet, when the London Times sprung the Pigott forgeries upon the world, a 
panic existed in the Parnellite ranks, and a terrible fear, born of the nerveless craven 
natures of many of those men, took possession of them. They imagined that some real 
information was behind the Pigott forgeries, and like all such crouching dispositions, 
began to suspect some of the men who had risked their lives for Ireland in trying to carry 
out the former Parnellite policy of being at this time in collusion with the enemy's mur- 
der organ. In their fright they knew not whom to suspect, but one or two of the living 
whom they had by implication more vilely wronged, they fastened their foul, unmanly suspi- 
cions upon. 

In the moment of panic and agony Mr. Patrick Egan, an honored Irish patriot, came 
to their aid, and by his help they unearthed the Times source of information ; then they 
felt relieved and could put a bold front before the world with lighter hearts. Not one 
Invincible, not even the humblest, would for all the gold in the Bank of England stand 
beside the brutal assassin journal that was trying to defame their bleeding country, 
although they looked with equal loathing and scorn on the cruel policy of falsehood and 
slander pursued by the once respected Parnellites. The writer has this knowledge of the 
stale of the Parnellite mind from the mouth of one of the highest and most trusted of the 
party. , 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 545 

L was a very young man, one of those god-like specimens of man- 
hood, created by a wise Providence, and endowed with supernatural gifts 
to aid in the salvation of a down-trodden people. He was destined to be 
the advanced apostle, who was to bear the beacon light, to point to the 
narrow path of travail by which his bleeding motherland would emerge, 

newly born, in the sunlight of freedom. K on a previous visit had 

appointed him to succeed the imprisoned N upon the council. He 

died a martyr's death ; posterity and an independent Ireland will revere 
his memory. 

O was an earnest, sincere, and patriotic Irishman, an enthusiast, 

but o*ne who never flinched when the order for duty came. He was a 
thorough Celt in the buoyancy of his disposition, but more subject to out- 
side influence and the power of a stronger intellect than either L or 

M . 

K was perfectly satisfied that the brave comrades whom he found 

in that council would be always ready to do or dare anything that mortal 
men could do for their manacled nation. He told them to select from 
among themselves the officer whom they wished to preside over them, 
more especially as this was now a subordinate office. The result by 
ballot was two votes for M and two votes for O . K was com- 
pelled to exercise his authority and appoint a chairman. He placed O 

in the vacant office. His personal predilection was in favor of M ; but 

as there was a local feeling apparent in one member against this man, and 

as the appointment was almost immaterial, he chose O to remove the 

faintest feeling that might mar harmony among the men with whom he 

would have to work out serious duties for Ireland. O was an ex-I. R. B. 

man and a personal friend of Q , the only man on the Dublin council 

who had ever met that brave Parnellite official. 

In discussing the best and most suitable place to attack the chief of 
the enemy's murder bureau, opinions were divergent. After hearing the 
suggestions offered by the men, who were familiar with every part of the 

city, K decided he would drive over the ground and reconnoiter before 

coming to a decision. He did so and selected a part of the Dublin quays 
near the Park where the street narrowed, the houses in that section being 
built nearer the river. It was observed that when the enemy's chief 
drove abroad (at this time his movements became very irregular) that an 
additional force of police, spies, and detectives were placed along his 
route of travel ; all these the Irish learned were on the alert, armed, and 
prepared for resistance. It was necessary that the patriot force should be 
equal to that of the enemy. Armed Invincibles in sufficient number were 
posted to guard all resistance from the foe. These men were in the 
immediate vicinity of the premeditated attack. 

The "suppression " of this chief of the foreign murder bureau could 
be more easily carried out by the deliberate and almost certain death of 
the man or men engaged ; but this was positively forbidden by the Par- 
nellite Government, who, in their morbid belief in secrecy, hoped that 
the men engaged would successfully get away by acting together, or if not 
share all the same dangers equally, which will explain the careful plan- 
ning necessary to accomplish results, under the peculiar circumstances of 
the time, with a numerous armed and watchful foe ever on the alert. 

The movements of the enemy were very uncertain, and information 
of his intended goings and comings was always unreliable. Incorrect 
reports were spread abroad for purposes of deception. But one morning 
the Invincibles had news which was considered reliable, that the enemy 
would leave the Chief Secretary's lodge about eleven o'clock, and driving 
down the quays visit the Castle for the transaction of some of his infamous 
duties. 



546 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The number of Invincibles considered necessary were concentrated in 
the neighborhood of the scene where the attack was expected to take 
place, and a few men were posted within sight of each other to give the 
signal of the appearance of Forster and pass the news to their comrades. A 
vehicle was ordered to drive after the enemy's carriage when the Invincible 
on duty near the Secretary's lodge was certain by personal observation 
that the chief of the British murder gang occupied a seat in the carriage. 
The man appointed to see that the enemy's chief left the lodge was the 
unfortunate James Carey. Carey's instructions were to ride down the 
quay, sitting alongside the driver in the wake of Forster's carriage, giving 
the signal to the first Invincible sentry, whose duty it was to take lip the 
signal and pass it along the line. Carey, driving on the box seat, was 
instructed to see that these orders were obeyed. 

At a meeting of the four Invincible officers, held the night previous to 

the meditated attack, Carey begged of K , who presided, to remove 

him from the dangerous position he would occupy on the box seat of the 
vehicle following the enemy's carriage. He pleaded his large family as a 

reason for making this — for an Invincible — extraordinary request. L 

and M exchanged glances. Carey suffered in their estimation, and 

K felt satisfied that he was a man of very weak nerves. There was 

no alternative but to grant his request, for to place a man with such 
physical infirmities in the position intended might endanger the success 
of the undertaking. The driver of the vehicle (who was an Invincible) 
with a comrade were to give the first sentinel the signal as soon as Carey 
saw Forster leave in his carriage. This order was to be conveyed to these 
men promptly. 

On the morning of this expected attack K left his abode to make 

some business calls. These visits were in the neighborhood of the Park. 

The driver he usually employed was a man, so far as K knew, in no 

way identified with Irish national affairs. He was a jovial fellow with a 

good honest face. He had a fast horse, of which he was proud. K felt 

satisfied that not one carman in a hundred in Dublin City but would have 
proved loyal to him if any necessity arose. At this time the sentiment in 
favor of Irish manufactures was at its zenith, and a new factory to manu- 
facture woolen goods about to be started had its offices on the Liffey 
side of Park Gate Street a little above Kingsbridge. K made a busi- 
ness visit to this office, timing himself so that his call Avould be completed, 
and that he would find himself disengaged to arrive on the scene in the 
wake of the vehicle that followed the British Chief's carriage, but he was 
detained by the manager's conversation a minute or two longer than he 
wished. How important minutes are often in the solution of great events ! 

When K mounted on the outside car and told the driver to proceed 

quickly down the Quay, he could see before him Forster's carriage, speeding 
rapidly, followed at some distance by the Invincible vehicle. K 's car- 
man drove at a rapid pace to try and overtake the swiftly moving carriage. 

Every second K was expecting to hear the sound of firing and the 

beginning of the attack ; but to his astonishment the carriage passed the 
place appointed, and nothing unusual occurred. The sentry, whose duty 
it was* to signal the main body that the approaching carriage was the 
enemy's, was leaning against the Quay wall, expecting to see Carey on 
the vehicle coming down the road, and to receive from him the signal. 
He took no notice of the signalman on the opposite side of the road, 
who incorrectly thought that the signal was taken up. There was a 
number of idlers near, and the sentries could not tell but that they were 
Invincibles. These lookers on leaned over the Quay walls, unconscious 
of the possibility of danger. The signalman who failed was incorrectly 
instructed; he should have been made to repeat the order back again, to 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 547 

make certain it was intelligible. He was rebuked by his officer for the 
error, which was only his in part. 

When K 's car came up he hurriedly took in the situation : two 

policemen and a sergeant were talking together at the corner of the bridge 
close by, and possibly among the many loiterers grouped about were some 
of the enemy's armed guards ; but had the signal been properly taken up 
Forster would have been " suppressed "; he who destroyed the people by 
bayonet, dungeon, and buckshot would have perished by the bullet. 

That night Forster left for Kingstown, sleeping on board the mail 
steamer (for the old tyrant was in a perpetual and restless condition of 
fright) and left for London next morning. 

The Invincible officers were much annoyed at the misadventures of the 
day and the temporary departure of the enemy's chief from Dublin, who 
got off again unscathed. K gave the Dublin Council certain instruc- 
tions ; parting, he left the city for a time. 

The orders he gave the Invincible Officers were relative to a morning 
attack on their enemy when he arrived to re-commence his mission of 

blood. A short time after Forster made a hurried visit to Dublin. K , 

who had received positive information of his approaching departure that 
night, sent a telegram to the Dublin officer ; but although the men were in 
the neighborhood of Westland Row at an early morning hour to await 
the arrival of the train, by another chapter of accidents the enemy escaped. 

During K 's stay in Dublin he enrolled in the Invincible ranks two 

revolutionary friends. These men were both invaluable additions to the 
National ranks. One of them, from the nature of his business and sur- 
roundings, could at a crisis render loyal service to Ireland ; the other as 
an active worker could be useful in communicating with the Invincible 

officers in case of emergency. On K 's return to Dublin he removed 

Carey from any consultative position on the Council ; his action in con- 
nection with the recent mishap and the desertion of two of his men, who 

left Ireland in fright over the recent failure, decided K in taking this 

step. Although this was done for the perfection of discipline, Carey's 
loyalty to Ireland was unquestioned. There was no man who had any 
right for a moment to suspect this^fter his record, and this was true at 
that time and long after. Carey remained a worker ; all knowledge of 

the details of future movements was kept from him thenceforth. L , 

M , and K discussed these when together. Carey obeyed his 

instructions faithfully, care being taken that nothing of a nature requiring 

desperate courage was intrusted to him. Q 's friend O , who had 

been up to this chairman of the council, K felt compelled to remove, 

and M was placed in his position. There was nothing to be said of 

O 's courage or devotion to Ireland ; he was and is a sincere patriot, 

but a foolish indiscretion, which in a less serious movement might be con- 
sidered trifling, necessitated the appointing of another officer. O and 

Carey remained nominal members of the council, but all consultative 
duties were transacted when they were not present. One of the new 
members, P , was at this juncture placed upon the council. 

K felt satisfied that with such intelligent assistance as L , 

M , and P could bring to the cause, this Dublin visit would carry 

out the policy of the organization. 

The same information was received by the patriots that the enemy's 
chief would leave for the Castle on his mission of blood as on the morning 
of the omitted signals. This time arrangements were made which in all 

human probability would be successful. K was told by his officers 

that the Invincibles were enraged at the number of failures, and would be 

sure to give a good account of themselves that morning. K arranged 

this time to be on the scene before the beginning of hostilities. He left 



548 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

his abode that morning, expecting a sanguinary fight on the quay. A mer- 
chant who has his office and store not far from the scene of the ex- 
pected encounter K knew very well. They had become acquainted 

in Cork. He paid this merchant an ostensible business visit, intending to 
remain until the approaching enemy was in sight. Surveying the scene, 
he saw the usual idlers and police on the bridge and others scattered in 
the neighborhood ; he concluded there would be a sharp fight before 
the incident closed. But enslaved peoples require to be educated in 
scenes of strife and bloodshed to become the advanced guard to freedom ; 
street fights are the forerunners of revolution. The suppressing of the 
brutal tyrant Forster, and the teaching of the Irish people a lesson by his 
death, seemed on the brink of completion. 

As K walked up to where the men were posted, the Invincible 

vehicle, which had made a detour from the Park, came rattling along the 
Quay, this time, as ordered, in front of the enemy's carriage. The British 
invader's equipage came thundering after in dashing style. As it drew 

nearer, K caught a glimpse of female garments ; there were ladies in 

the carriage with Forster. A short time previous to this a band of Irish 
guerrillas in the country had attacked a brutal landlord. The village 
tyrant escaped, and his sister-in-law Mrs. Smythe, who was by his side, 
vvas accidentally shot dead. No one deplored this lady's death more than 
the Irishmen engaged. 

The British press took up the howl of rage and slander, and with its 
million-fold sources of poisoning the ears of mankind, spread broadcast 
the cry that the Irish savages were murdering the ladies of Ireland. How 
few of those who read this piece of British news — which was cabled over 
the world — ever heard of the bloodstained scoundrels who pursued the 
women of Belmullet, stabbing and shooting them, as the poor creatures 
fled before Forster's armed brutes, who deliberately tried to murder them. 
Mrs. Smythe was killed by accident, but Forster's savages stabbed with 
positive and plain orders to carry out the intentions of their chief, by a 
premeditated massacre, inflicting on these Irishwomen wounds and death. 

It flashed upon K 's mind that the scene where Mrs. Smythe lost her 

life might be repeated here ; not a second was to be lost. The Invincible 
vehicle suddenly stopped, barring the passage of the enemy's carriage, the 
coachman hurriedly reined in his horses, and the enemy was brought to a 

standstill. Close by stood L , one of the bravest and most heroic of 

the Invincibles. An order from K , and the young officer promptly 

stepped from the pathway. Another instant of time, and as sure as the 
sun was in the heavens, the life of Ireland's tyrant was blotted out ; for a 
number of desperate men, brave sons of an outraged nation, were about 
to swoop down upon him and wipe out a small portion of the debt of mas- 
sacre and persecution. Their hands were stayed by authority ; they knew 
that their young leader was controlled by some outside orders, the mystery 
of which strengthened the bonds of discipline. 

An ejaculation and expletive of annoyance came from the enemy's 
coachman, little dreaming how near he was to a scene of bloodshed. The 
Invincible vehicle at a signal was driven rapidly away, and the Secretary's 
carriage drove on its route ; the whole incident was so rapid that before 
any of the enemy's armed guardians came on the scene the whole affair 

was over. This event confirmed K in the belief that any attack 

made by the Invincibles would be finished before the sluggish foe would 
arouse to the nature of his danger. 

No similar opportunity came again to the Invincibles. The Kilmain- 
ham treaty followed quickly, which somewhat puzzled the Nationalists as 
to its real meaning, as Mr. Parnell was held in high esteem at this epoch. 
During the rapid march of events, the enemy was watched as usual. At 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 549 

length news reached the Invincibles that he was leaving for London. 
There was no suspicion whatever of his resignation. Arrangements were 
made for the last time, and Brunswick Street, Dublin, was lined with 
armed Invincibles. Early on this day Forster and his son were seen to 
enter a bank by one of the Irish scouts. This scout unfortunately left to 
inform the Invincible officer in charge of the whereabouts of the oft- 
sought enemy. But in doing this Forster got off unnoticed. Forster 
stole away from Dublin Castle early in the afternoon ; from what was 
learned of his movements afterward, stole away is the term applicable. 
He was, no doubt, seriously alarmed, while trying to preserve an appear- 
ance of outward calm. He knew what no one in Dublin then did, that 
that was his last day of holding his dangerous and cruel office. 

He was well aware that he had so outraged the Irish nation, under the 
orders of his chief, Mr. Gladstone, that no man, woman, or child in Ireland 
but would have received with joy the news of his death. He drove to 
Kingstown instead of going by train, and dined in one of the Yacht Clubs. 
The Royal Irish, it is believed, entertained the British tyrant before his 
departure. 

The Invincibles, unaware of his having left Dublin, were filled with 
enraged and bitter feelings at their many failures ; they were now anxious 
to give him a parting shot. As K , accompanied by a friend, ap- 
proached Westland Row, he saw the men concentrating near St. Mark's 

Church at the end of Brunswick Street. On the way to the station K 

met the officer in command, who was superintending details. He stopped 
to talk with him a moment, the brave fellow told him that everything was 
right, that they would stop the enemy's carriage, as ordered, near the 
corner of Brunswick Street and St. Mark's Church. 

In a few minutes after, the enemy's carriage, preceded by one of the 
Invincibles driving rapidly, came along. Forster's family, the officer in? 
charge was told, were in the carriage, but not himself. This message of 
disappointment was followed by instant orders to concentrate at Westland 
Row ; the order was promptly obeyed. At the Railroad Terminus dis- 
cipline for a moment was broken ; several of the Invincibles, in the excite- 
ment of Forster's escaping again, rushed up on the railroad platform and 
ran along the carriages, looking for their foe. Had the British tyrant 
been there he would have been shot, even if the man who did it was to 
be instantly killed. After the London mail train left, K had a con- 
sultation with M ; a few men as sentinels were ordered to be left in 

the neighborhood, and after supper the rest were to take up their post at 
nine o'clock. The fact of Forster's family leaving convinced the Invin- 
cibles he would depart early in the morning, and, as his habit had been 
for some time back, would leave for Kingstown by a late train, and sleep 
on board the mail steamer. 

It was a miserable wet night and the men sought shelter in one or two 

places, posting sentinels outside, who were relieved in turn. K had 

heard a rumor that Forster had left and was anxiously looking out to see 
some of the Invincible officers, to learn if there could be truth in the 
report. At the corner of College Place on Brunswick Street he met the 
officer he was seeking, and told him of the current rumor. The brave 
fellow would not believe it true, but he could not be spared from his post 
to seek for any verification. One of the Invincible's vehicles, the driver 
of which was a stanch and manly though humble patriot, and James 
Carey were stationed at the Castle gate to watch the departure of Forster, 
who they were certain, from information they had received, was engaged 

on business inside before his departure. K walked up Dame Street 

to the Castle and saw Carey standing outside a tavern door a little above 
the express office nearly opposite the Castle, and near him the cardriver. 



55° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Carey was smoking a cigar and when he saw K he enthused a little ; 

he said that from what he was told Forster was inside the Castle and 
would soon leave, and that the rumor of his departure was purposely cir- 
culated by the enemy. But the time came when the British Secretary 
must depart, as the last train for Kingstown was 11.45 p - M - The Invin- 
cibles after their long hours on duty were compelled to leave for their 
homes, all their perseverance and self-sacrifice of no avail — so far not a 
blow struck. 

The next morning brought the astounding news of Forster's resig- 
nation, of an apparent change of front made by the enemy. This, 
coupled with the release of Mr. Parnell and the other prisoners, was a 
skillful diplomatic move on the part of the British Minister, Mr. Glad- 
stone ; for while he did not surrender one iota of his authority, he 
influenced many of the credulous Irish Provincialists to believe there 
was some improvement for the better in the enemy's cruel rule. These 
people so eagerly catch at any imaginary straw of consolation in the 
drowning state of the Irish nation ! 

The position K found himself placed in by the apparent compro- 
mise with the enemy was one of great responsibility. He was surprised 
that the Parnellite Administration had made no attempt to communicate 
with him, and that if their Irish policy had altered they had sent him 
no dispatch to that effect. Could it be possible that this apparent sur- 
render was but a ruse to deceive the enemy ? At this time he was in com- 
plete ignorance of the inner history of the Kilmainham treaty. He felt 
compelled to communicate with the Executive at once and learn the actual 
state of affairs from themselves, for if at this crisis he returned to head- 
quarters, the morale of the men would be seriously affected. The long 
period in which they were trying to come upon the trail of the enemy's ex- 
chief in Ireland with no results had exasperated them ; the unsuccessful 
•attempts to suppress this murderous tyrant had imbued them with feelings 
■of personal bitterness. With many of them the hatred against the man had 
grown stronger than that against the death-dealing official of the detested 

invader. K , knowing the men he had to control, — their desperate 

unyielding front to the foe, and how they would laugh to scorn (and 
rightly too) the idea that their unrelenting enemy, Gladstone, meant any 
serious surrender to Ireland by this new move, — properly concluded 
that orders to prepare for instant action should be given the men. If the 
Invincible Directory were a party to this apparent disgraceful surrender, 
then upon their shoulders should rest the responsibility of any disruption 
in the ranks of the Dublin Invincibles and any irregular course that might 
ensue. He had no business whatever with any of the intricate details of 
statesmanship. His was the plain duty of the soldier to try and destroy 
the murderous foe. 

The Invincible Administration in the original instructions conveyed to 

K ordered that the chiefs of the invaders who directed in Ireland the 

oppression and slaughter of her people should be suppressed. Tie 
Under Secretary up to this time was not attacked, as the office of his 
chief was to be first vacated by the "suppression" of the despot who lately 

held that post. When K was invested by the Administration with 

the command of the Dublin Invincibles, he had legal authority from the 
Executive to carry out this policy in full. The time had now come when 
he should issue such orders, and leave to the Invincible Government the 
responsibility of confirming or countermanding all action. But though he 
made up his mind as to the orders he would give the men, he was determined 
that no action would be taken until he heard from the Invincible Government. 

He was satisfied to believe that wisdom controlled their councils, and, 
no matter what were his own personal predilections, that these men, hav- 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 551 

ing every advantage and knowledge of the position, would do what was 
best for Ireland under the circumstances. 

That Wednesday evening K saw M , the officer who was chief 

of the Dublin council, and gave him orders to have the men ready by 

Friday to suppress the Under Secretary. It required all K 's authority 

to compel this man to relinquish the idea of following Forster to England. 
The Dublin men were enraged at the old tyrant escaping after all their 

toil, and many of them were prepared to give their lives for his. K 

pointed out to this Dublin officer that Ireland did not war with individ- 
uals, that Forster was politically dead, so far as their country was con- 
cerned, and to do him any harm now would be criminal. That for the 
present they would occupy their attention by vacating the office of the 
enemy's Under Secretary, and as soon as a successor to Forster was ap- 
pointed by the British Executive, the very day he landed on his blood- 
stained mission, they should try and make this office also vacant by the 
suppression of the new invader. This was the creed of the Invincibles, 

" war to the knife." K ordered that the weapon immortalized by 

Palafox should be used instead of revolvers. 

The enemy assassinated the Irish people by bayonets as well as gunshot 
wounds. As Mr. Parnell expressed it in his famous Wexford speech, 
Mr. Gladstone had supplied his Bashi-Bazouks with sharpened weapons of 
the newest pattern to use on the people. The officer who was in com- 
mand of the military Parnellites felt that Ireland's answer should be the 
grim reply — cold steel. He then sent a dispatch to the Invincible Direc- 
tory, asking them to send instructions at once. Did the public change of 
front alter their course ; what was he to do ; was he to return or continue 
their present policy ? Telling them that he had given certain orders, but 
that before executing these he awaited their answer back, he conveyed 
no information whatever as to his plans ; these did not belong to their 
province. In him was vested the authority to intelligently carry these 
out, which with his brave and heroic comrades he tried to do. What he 
wished to learn from the Parnellite statesmen of the movement, was, if 
there were any truth in the statements published in the newspapers as to 
a surrender ; or was Ireland's policy to continue unchanging, and her 
answer to the invader still to remain those words of the Spanish nationalist — 
" war to the knife." Whatever orders they should send him he was pre- 
pared to obey, doing his duty as a soldier by either attacking or retiring at 
their discretion. Such in substance was the contents of this important 
dispatch, sent under cover to an official of the Parnellites, by whom it 

would be given to Q and delivered to the proper authorities. The 

Parnellite who received this dispatch from Dublin remains to this day in 
the ranks of "legal agitation." 

K ■ naturally expected that whatever decision the Irish authorities 

came to, as to the future policy of the nation, it would be unanimous ; 
he never dreamed for an instant that he would hear subsequent cowardly 
denunciation. Although he well knew there were a great number of weak 
men, mere politicians, in the Parnellite ranks, he concluded that these 
men purposely or nervously stood aside, and permitted the bolder and 
more manly spirits to control affairs. The panic which seized these 
politicians when the enemy began to strike might be over, but this dis- 
play of fright proved that they were incapable of taking the helm during 
any crisis. It was only natural to think that these men would leave the 
ranks of the Parnellites if they suspected an active policy was adopted by 
those controlling " legal agitation." But having already voluntarily vacated 
their posts of duty, through personal dread of consequences, it was 
scarcely to be expected that the return of these poltroons, when the enemy 
appeared to grow more complacent, would influence the Invincible Execu- 



552 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

tive ; especially as these runaways had only an indirect affiliation with the 
patriot organizations. 

Friday morning brought to K the anxiously looked for dispatch 

from the Executive. The active policy was still to continue; nothing 
was in any way changed. The Directory was astonished at the inaction 
of the men in Dublin (if these good statesmen had had a little practical 

knowledge of this inaction!). K was instructed to remain upon the 

ground and on no account to leave Dublin, as they would understand his 
presence there meant action. 

P was present as K received and read this dispatch. It was 

news that pleased them both, as a change of policy was feared. They 
concluded that there was a skillful game of political deception being 
played by the statesmen of the British and Irish nations. But now that 

K 's authority was confirmed and a load of grave responsibility 

removed from his mind, he went cheerfully to carry out the attack already 

sketched out with M , who v/aited K 's presence to sanction action. 

K concluded that the forthcoming action would strengthen the 

hands of the Parnellite Administration and not allow Ireland to lapse into 
a weak and delusive policy, such as the runaway Provincialists, if they got 
the upper hand, would again restore. 

It will be remembered that one of the charges made against the actors 
in the Phcenix Park incident was, that that event was the irresponsible 
act of a small body of men without authority, and also it was stated that 
extremists — as the Irish Nationalists are called by some — were enraged 
at the Irish peaceful victory (?) won by "legal agitation." This was a 
deliberate lie purposely put in circulation by timorous and frightened men, 
who ktiew differently j the facts are recorded here, and it will be seen that 
this falsehood had no foundation whatever. K , the responsible offi- 
cer in charge, received the sanction and orders of the then Irish Parnellite 
Administration before striking a blow. This Executive, as already stated, 
was composed of responsible men of judgment and authority. If all of 
these were not present to in person give their sanction to the dispatch 

sent K in Dublin, they were represented by whoever they deputed this 

authority to ; they cannot, even if so inclined, shift the responsibility on to 
the brave Dublin soldiers, who, like the military of any nation, were carry- 
ing on the war declared by their statesmen. In Ireland's case the war 
was declared by the invader seven centuries ago. Ireland, although 
crushed and bleeding and at times apparently annihilated, never sur- 
rendered. Every generation carried on the struggle, from the invasion to 
the flight of the earls, on to the siege of Limerick, and the rapparee 
guerrilla warfare, thence to the war for independence carried on by the 
brave soldiers of '98, on to Emmet's time, thence to '48 and the Fenian or 
I. R. B. times down to the days of the Invincibles. Ireland's bloody 
struggle with her enemy can only cease by the destruction of the Irish 
race or the creation of an Irish Republic. 

Even if K did not communicate with his government, but after 

the departure and resignation of Forster he proceeded therewith to carry 
out his full original instructions, they were # the responsible authority 
under which he and the Dublin patriots were acting. They knew he was 
on the ground in furtherance of the National policy. If this policy had 
changed {which it did not then) a dispatch from these Parnellite statesmen 
would have made the 6th of May an impossibility. To their undying 
honor, they sent, at this crisis, to their commanding officer in Dublin the 
patriotic dispatch mentioned. Hence let it be emphatically expressed 
here that the honor of this tragic event rests on the statesmanship of 
the Parnellite movement, no matter how many of these men of the 
weak and timid section now attempt to slander and vilify the brave 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 553 

Irish soldiers who obeyed official orders, and who have written in Irish 
history a page that brightens this black epoch of British savagery. 

When K arrived at the Phoenix Park he met the Invincible officer 

in charge of the entrance gate ; the men were reconnoitering to try and 

learn something of the Under Secretary's movements. K told him 

that unless the undertaking could come off at once, it was better to post- 
pone it until the following day ; that a new chief of the invaders' " murder 
conspiracy " was coming, whom it would be their duty to suppress. He 

then left instructions with M to attend with his colleague at an 

assigned rendezvous, where they would decide on the plan of campaign 

for the following day. In the meantime K entered the Park, saw 

the other officers, and instructed them to dismiss their men. 

That evening L and M met K at the appointed rendez- 
vous ; the arrangements deemed necessary for the following day's attack 
were discussed and all emergencies which might arise, should they be 
successful in coming on the enemy, were provided for, in so far as they 
could provide for these possible countermoves. The Invincibles were 
eager to wipe out their past misadventures and were in a perfect state of 

discipline. Both the officers assured K that he could rely on every 

man facing the enemy unflinchingly, if necessary ; and that they might be 
shot down in the Phoenix Park, but that they would neither fly nor sur- 
render. If forced by a superior attack of the enemy, it was decided to 
make it a life or death struggle. 

Early that day, while the Invincible officer and K were engaged 

in conversation at the Park gate, a troop of Hussars of the enemy's passed 

by. K observed these mounted troops, and said to the officer that 

these soldiers might possibly be on the scene in the event of an open 
fight in the Park, as they were quartered not far off. The brave Irish 
patriot replied, " If we had hand-grenades we could easily scatter these 
uniformed boys ; however, even armed as we are, we will give a good 
account of these British cavalry if such encounter should arise." 

The coming of the new chief of the enemy's murder bureau gave 
rise to a possible hope that he could be found after his arrival without 
interfering with the other plans. Full final details were being concluded 

when P arrived on the scene. He brought some news of the enemy's 

movements, which he was able to procure from a special channel ; he also 
came with dreadful news, which he learned from the same source — 
news which quickened the blood in the veins of his hearers. It was the 
account of the horrible massacre that took place in Ballina that day ; the 
brutal enemy had imbrued his hands in the blood of Irish children — several 
little Irish boys had been mortally wounded ; that the British myrmidons 
fired a volley of buckshot into the ranks of the children, and then merci- 
lessly stabbed all they could overtake, that one little fellow dropped dead 
in his father's presence. As P told of this atrocious crime — this satur- 
nalia of blood — L , the young Invincible, pressed his hands and knit 

his brows, looking his officer earnestly in the face. K , as if this silent 

glance was a question, answered back, "This new invader heralds his 
arrival in our country by the bloodshed of our children. He inaugurates 
his assumption of office by a bloody massacre and promises to be as 
brutal a monster as his predecessor. He is as responsible for this savage 
deed of blood as if he directly ordered the assassinations, and, with God's 
help, Ireland will make him accountable for this deed of slaughter ; our 
country demands we make no further errors or delays, but strike ! This 
newcomer has willingly volunteered to accept the post of Ireland's chief 
murderer, from the chief of a government that has no legal existence 
in this nation. We must, as becomes our manhood, and as soldiers of 
Ireland, see that this hideous deed of blood is answered back by the 



554 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

destruction of the responsible tyrant, whose official hands are already 
stained with our children's gore. This is our duty before he is many days 
in our land, if by any chance we fail to-morrow." 

The Invincible chief was hopeful of the morrow, but so many morrows 
had brought disappointment ; what if the coming day brought them 

death ? They parted ; M was to meet K at a certain rendezvous 

the following day at an early hour in the afternoon. The Dublin men 

were gay and cheerful, but K was moody and sad when parting upon 

this memorable night. 

The morning of May 6 dawned with softness and beauty. It was a 
day quite suitable for a pageant, for nature wore her holiday robes. Irish 
traitors rejoiced at the arrival of a new foreign tyrant, and some of these 
rebels tried to raise a faint cheer when the murderer of the Ballina boys, 
the new chief of the assassination machine that perpetrated the massacre, 
passed by in his carriage. But although the populace generally had not 
heard of this fresh crime of the invaders, indignant faces greeted the 
occupant of the carriage whenever he was pointed out. Shortly after the 

procession passed by, K received some vital information from the 

enemy's ranks. He sought a messenger, and the only available one for 
the purpose was James Carey. It will be remembered that Carey's 
timidity before danger and his impulsive manner, lacking steadiness of 
purpose, made him utterly unsuited to hold any position of authority ; 
hence his removal from any knowledge of details or being in any way 

consulted. The brave Irishman M , then in charge of the local 

council, always mistrusted Carey's suitability for any post of either danger 
or importance ; he had known him for many years. He did not for some 

time convey this doubt to K , but when circumstances made this fact 

apparent the Invincible captain approved of K 's orders that Carey in 

future should not be made acquainted with any movements except what- 
ever his own share of action would be. But no one had any reason to 

question Carey's loyalty ; hence K sought him as a messenger whom 

he of course could trust implicitly. 

Calling at Carey's house K discovered they were all from home. 

On his return toward Westland Row he met Mrs. Carey, who knew K 

was a friend of her husband. She had some children with her and 

stopped K , asking him if he wanted Mr. Carey. He told her he called 

to see him on business, but it would wait. As history since has been 

written K 's not finding Carey for his messenger that morning deprived 

that unfortunate man of some information about the Park " suppression," 
which he died without knowing. 

K saw the Dublin chief officer in person a short time after and con- 
veyed to him the morning's message and more important news he had 
received later, which from the source it came cannot be given here, but 

its results were seen. As K held no personal communication with 

the men, all his orders and instructions passed through the mouth of their 
own local officers. 

The enemy all this time never relaxed his vigilance ; the cry of wolf, so 
often called out, may have had its result in wearing off anxiety, and in so 
far this vigilance was mere routine, but among the lookers on at the Polo 
match that day in the Park were scattered some of the enemy's armed 
myrmidons in plain clothes, ready to kill and, what was more dangerous, 
sound the alarm. 

The new chief of the British murder society had scarcely more than 
arrived in Dublin Castle to attend the mummeries attached to the installa- 
tion of a new usurping Governor General of Ireland to represent his 
sovereign, when he was made aware that he should be guarded as his pre- 
decessor was. The person who conveyed this information to him was 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 555 

the permanent official, the Under Secretary of the bureau of assassination. 
This official was stained with many crimes committed against Ireland ; he 
was a rebel and renegade in the employ of her foe ; and yet his black 
offenses were venal compared to that of this newcomer, his chief. For 
this man held rank in his own island of Britain and had enough of wealth 
and honors gained in the service of his own nation to satisfy reasonable 
ambition — a luxurious home and all the advantages which caste and 
fortune could shower on him. And yet he accepted a position as chief 
of a gang of invaders, who were destroying the people of a neighboring 
nation, perpetrating atrocities as brutal in their results on the Irish 
people as the savage Turks did in Bulgaria. For Ireland is suffering 
under as barbarous a system of foreign laws as the skill and cruelty of a 
demon could invent. This new chief of these savage destroyers of Ireland 
came to that country, deliberately leaving his own home to continue this 
alien assassin rule and enforce it to the best of his ability. From the 
hour he put his bloodstained foot upon the island it was the sacred duty 
of Irishmen to suppress him, and every succeeding assassin chief who came 
on a similar errand of blood. It is not only their sacred duty, but it 
should become a religion of this outraged, bleeding nation. 

The enemy, although in a vague manner expecting some kind of physi- 
cal opposition, for which he was armed at all possible points, never thought 
for a moment that the Irish would or could conceive so daring a thought 
as to attack the invaders' chieftains in broad daylight and in so public a 
part of Dublin as the Phoenix Park. But the foe did not know the 
heroism and determination of the sacred band of Irishmen, those noble- 
souled patriots, who came to their country's rescue as she lay prostrate 
and bleeding under the many stabs dealt by these ferocious foreign 
banditti, who were then and are still preying on her vitals. 

The Invincible chiefs never for a moment lost sight of the probability 
amounting almost to a certainty of an alarm being given, which would 
arouse the enemy's garrison and change the whole complexion of the 
attack. But this in all human probability could not occur before the 
chiefs of the British murder gang were destroyed ; in thus accomplishing 
their purpose the victory would rest with the Irish. They knew that the 
closing of the Park gates would more than probably follow any noisy com- 
motion, which would be also the signal for the Constabulary barracks, which 
was near by, to pour forth re-enforcements of armed men. This probable 
circle of death hemming them in they came prepared to face if fate so 
willed it. In that ring of death those devoted Irishmen stood ready for all 
possible emergencies. These men were as truly Ireland's sacred band, as 
worthy the title as the heroic Greek patriots facing their brutal tyrants the 
Turks at Ardrachan. Among these Irish patriots was one weak man, but 
that day he was loyal to his native land ; it must be said in favor of this 
unfortunate individual that he tried to combat with his constitutional 
infirmity, but it was plain to all who saw his movements, engaging in con- 
versation with every passing acquaintance, that he had a hard struggle 
with himself. As soon as his mission was over he was sent away ; this was 
before the commencement of the attack. 

To meet the event of the enemy dispatching mounted men to pursue 
the four members of the band detailed to suppress the chiefs of the foe, — 
two or three horsemen were the most they could instantaneously muster, — 
men were appointed by the Invincible officers to speedily unhorse these 
mounted messengers, as the safe departure of the four men on the car 
which awaited them, and their successful escape, was to be considered a 
most important sequel to the " suppression " of the secretaries. 

Every precaution that human ingenuity could devise was taken, so that 
there should be no blunder. That these chiefs of the enemy's murder 



55 6 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

bureau should be slain was of paramount importance, even if the sacred 
band perished, and every member should be left bleeding in the 
greensward or roadway near that Phoenix monument. This could not 
be accomplished, their leader knew well, without numbers of the foe 
biting the dust, for the Invincibles were prepared to sell their lives dearly. 

Had the foe succeeded in sounding the alarm, and had the enemy 
appeared in force, which he undoubtedly would have done in response, 
possibly the Invincibles would have developed a more deadly skirmish 
line than the invaders' forces would have expected to meet. Had an 
alarm been sounded that May evening, the Phoenix Park would have been 
the arena of a bloody encounter. There is no doubt but that it would 
have been a scene of courage and heroism in a stand-up fight not wit- 
nessed in Ireland since '98, for the sacred band would have fought to the 
death while one cartridge remained in an Irish soldier's pouch. What 
quiet valor and manly courage, undreamtof even by the possessors, do stir- 
ring events and tragic incidents in the life of nations develop and reveal 
in their patriot sons ! 

That the necessity of a combat would not be forced upon them was 
the anxious care of those guiding Ireland's soldiers ; for the great victory 
of a swift and mysterious blow was a hundred-fold more important to the 
Irish nation than what the angry exchange of shots could possibly 
bring, no matter with what intrepidity sustained by Ireland's devoted 
soldiers. 

The sacred band went into the Park that afternoon with the impres- 
sion — which was more strongly shared by the leaders — that they could 
not possibly hope to expect such swift and rapid success to reward their 
efforts as actually came to pass ; they went there expecting that the "sup- 
pression " of the secretaries would almost certainly bring on a combat to 
the death. 

The newly arrived chief of the British assassination bureau in Ireland 
met his confederate, the Under Secretary, in the Phoenix Park by appoint- 
ment, and not by accident as supposed. The subject of their open air con- 
ference was Forster's dangerous position, which the new invader received 
with incredulity. The Under Secretary spoke of the necessity of increas- 
ing the vigilance and the number of the official guards. Some of these 
guards, careless and not expecting any attack, were to be seen idly loiter- 
ing about. The two confederates were discussing this subject of Forster's 
danger when the Invincibles came up. 

There are giant epochs in the history of nations when the events of a 
short period of time stand out in . bold relief, carved by the hands of 
Titans on the imperishable records of a nation's sufferings. One of these 
supreme moments had come to Ireland ! Held aloft by the strong arm 
of a pure-souled and stainless patriot was the steel of the avenger. From 
his eyes flashed the lightnings of Heaven ! There stood, typified in the 
person of one living mortal, the swooping vengeance of centuries of 
wrong. He looked, as he stood there, as if one of the giant sons of the 
embrace of angels once more walked the earth — the Herculean form of 
the noble youth ready to strike the inhuman foe. For in that foe was 
concentrated the long chain of persecution and atrocious cruelties of the 
most fiendish nature — fraud, perfidy, and assassination ! 

As the glorious orb, the idol of early nature, sank toward the bosom 
of the West, there shot forth fiery rays across the horizon, as if the sun in 
sympathy had dipped into a bath of blood and fire ; one of his spears of 
gold leaped forth with a weird bright gleam of saffron that glistened and 
flashed for a second around the uplifted blade ere it swiftly sheathed itself 
in the invader of the land, the emissary of slaughter. 

The hearts of those present stand still for a moment, as if their pulsa- 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 557 

tions had ceased, and fingers are mechanically pressed upon the concealed 
weapons each man bears upon his person. Every ear is straining for 
the shout of rage from the scattered foe, or a signal gun sure to be re- 
echoed by the rattle of small-arms. But it passed away, no alarms are 
sounded. The secretaries are stretched upon the ground. Ireland has 
struck her assailant and invader back again. In the persons of their 
chieftains the foe is slain. The four Invincibles mount the car, and they 
are driving off, when the Irish Paladin who struck the first blow leaves 
the side of his more youthful yet gallant comrade, and steps again upon the 
ground. As if in protest against remaining concealed, his revolver has 
sprung upon the sod. The young man coolly stoops down and picks u^ 
his weapon, and resuming his place on the car the vehicle quickly dis- 
appears. 

The Irish leaders, before whose eyes like rays of lightning flashed this 
historic vision, as they gazed upon this tragic scene, remembered the 
chain of horror with which these invaders had tried to strangle their 
country. They recalled the winter when Chichester and Sir Richard 
Moryson, returning from an expedition against the Irish patriot Bryan 
MacArt, saw a horrible spectacle — three children, the eldest not above 
ten years old, all eating and gnawing with their teeth the entrails of their 
dead mother, on whose flesh they had fed for twenty days past. Oh, 
horror of horrors ! Can the human imagination conceive such a ghastly 
sight as this ? It was the work of a British assassin chieftain, Mountjoy, 
one of the predecessors in horrors of this Cavendish, whom on the thresh- 
old of fresh crimes outraged Ireland had just slain. Yesterday — only 
yesterday these horrors were repeated in Ballina, where helpless and 
innocent children were left weltering in their blood by the hirelings of 
these foreign brutes. There is no hereafter for a nation; her wrongdoing 
must be punished here. Ireland seeks an eye for an eye and a tooth for 
a tooth. 

The rapid incident had closed successfully, and no alarm from the foe. 
The Irish soldiers were unexpectedly aided by the cowardice and panic 
of the enemy. Among those who completely lost their heads was a British 
cavalry officer. The enemy's guards shrank away paralyzed at the sudden 
and mysterious attack, and when they recovered their reason after the 
fright with which they were struck down, they were no doubt ashamed to 
admit their panic. It was of the highest importance to British prestige in 
Ireland, and elsewhere, not to admit this terror of their armed instruments. 
The neglect of their infamous duty, this haunting fear which caused them 
to make a stampede, had to be overlooked. They dared not admit that 
they were completely outgeneraled by the Irish, for British tyrants affect 
to despise Ireland's hostility. The consciences of these cruel monsters, 
when their bravery is put to the test, strike terror to their souls ; they know 
their many crimes, and are found to have but the courage of the mounte- 
bank or the bravo in the hour of emergency. 

K was in a reverie as the incident was closing, when he was 

aroused by the action of one of the sacred band near. He became con- 
scious ; he was the possessor of a fierce, strange joy; an emotion never to 
be forgotten pervaded his whole being. Not one man belonging to that 
sacred band had the smallest personal feeling toward the slain foe. Their 
souls were filled with the purity and patriotism of their acts. They recog- 
nized the important truth that they were humble instruments in the hands 
of Providence, to punish in some measure the many sacrilegious crimes 
committed by the arrogant invaders on their bleeding country. 

When the incident was over, every order wa,s faithfully obeyed as at 
first. The sacred band might be said to have melted into the ground, so 
instantaneously did they disappear. 



55 8 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

There was neither accident, error, nor mistake by the Irish in the Park 
that day. The action throughout the whole movement was cool, deliber- 
ate, and effective. The Invincibles on the ground were in a perfect state 
of discipline, and under complete control. While the unhappy Carey was 
waiting to carry out his duty, the satisfactory recognition of the enemy's 
Under Secretary, the chief was carefully looked after as an event of greater 
importance. The " suppression " of the new chief of the British murder 
bureau was of the highest necessity and significance at this crisis. It was 
a thousand times greater in its result and its magnitude to Ireland than 
that of suppressing the Under Secretary alone, although the Irish people 
Had a great personal hatred for the latter, and had not time to become pos- 
sessed of that feeling toward the new invader. To those who look upon 
the great political significance of these events it was the suppression of 
the chief that was the victory of this incident, and which gave to the whole 
affair such grave importance in the eyes of European statesmen. 

The finger of Providence could be seen guiding and protecting the 
patriots during the whole period of action. He had raised up these humble 
men to be his instruments in punishing the overweening arrogance and 
barbarous cruelty of Britain toward the neighboring island. No human 
skill and foresight could of itself bring that sacred band into that public 
Park, within a stone's throw of hundreds of armed men, and bring them out 
not only unscathed but unsuspected. In a city filled with eight thousand 
armed foes in the service of the invader, these inspired patriots struck 
down the chiefs of the atrocious conspiracy against the life of their suffer- 
ing nation. The Great Creator gave wisdom to the leaders and strength 
and courage to the sacred band, and with humility and reverence this 
supernatural aid was felt by all. Especially was this made manifest to 
those who bore the great responsibility of this immortal page in Irish 
history. From the delivery of the order to take action down to the 
smallest detail in the closing scene of this great event nothing but 
Divine Help could have borne them through the ordeal, illuminating their 
minds with intelligence and foresight, and strengthening their resolution 
with holy and sacred motives, that justice in its simple purity demanded 
the wiping out of these tyrants. 

Ireland would have been greatly benefited by this blow struck her 
cruel invader, but that a great many of her leading statesmen relapsed 
into crime. The path of righteousness was departed from, and they 
sank into the slough of felony. They re-commenced an attempt to com- 
promise the pure and holy cause of Ireland with the blackened, gore- 
covered criminals who were continuing the foul felony of pillagers and 
invaders of the nation. The sacred religion preached with such solem- 
nity on the 6th of May was departed from ; the Heavenly rays of patriot- 
ism shone upon them and they refused to see it — they shut their eyes to 
the sanctified and glorious vision. The letters of fire flashed before 
them telling them that " Through the baptism of blood alone can Ireland 
succeed in shaking off the clutch of the devil fish that is dragging her 
down to that monster's cavern of destruction," but they heeded not the 
inspiration ; they lost the pure faith that had been vouchsafed to them, 
they denounced the sacred band, they ignored all their previous warlike 
determination and heroism. 

To-day they wallow in the mire of this denunciation, compelled to 
swallow what filth and dirt they are offered to try to escape the smallest 
suspicion from the Liberal assassins of the Irish nation, their present 
British criminal associates ; they are loaded with the virus and excres- 
cence of their own denunciations, and shiver with fright lest their 
country's foes, now their allies, should suspect that they were ever honored 
with the inspiration of the pure truths of patriotism. 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 559 

The enemy's " murder organ " has induced them to denounce the 
sacred religion preached by the instruments of Wise Providence on that 
memorable 6th of May. This vile organ of the enemy's murder con- 
spiracy compelled them by its false and lying information to become its 
accomplice and associate in heaping calumny on those Titans of liberty 
who made history in the Phoenix Park. In repelling the Times assertions, 
which that journal had no genuine information to sustain, these fallen 
comrades of British tyrants surpassed the Times in their slander of these 
pure patriots — these men who were raised up by inspiration to come to 
their country's rescue in one of the black and bitter hours forced upon 
unhappy Ireland by the present British allies of these fallen statesmen. 
No wonder that the sanctified scene in the Park bore no fruit to pros- 
trate Ireland. The darkened face of an angry God was turned upon 
these Parnellites who denounced the light given to them, and who 
deserted the patriots in their hour of agony and suffering. 

The panic of the enemy in Dublin has been alluded to in another part 
of this history; they feared armed insurrection over the island, they 
knew not what to expect after the death of the secretaries, until 
Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and Davitt came to their rescue, by issuing a proc- 
lamation, which saved British diplomacy, and reconciled them by the hope 
that Ireland did not really want her freedom from their rule, but only a 
mockery of such under the British flag. Ireland's assassins were called by 
this proclamation illustrious strangers, deserving of hospitality. These 
able statesmen omitted to banquet Mr. Balfour after Mitchelstown. 
How inhospitable to this other illustrious stranger ! 

The great anxiety of the robbers' rule in Ireland compelled Mr. Glad- 
stone to exude all his oily benevolence on some of the leading Parnellites ; 
he learned that he had made a mistake, that he had arrested the wrong 
men ; that indiscriminate coercion was bad policy for Britain. But 
while he tried to wear a smile of amiability to the Provincialists he was 
forging fresh chains for their country. 

He saw his mistake in suppressing the " Land League," in that from 
this act came to life the Invincibles he had appointed to power, — or what 
is equivalent to it, advised Mr. Parnell to resume the leadership of the 
public Irish movement, — and henceforth the Irish people, whom these men 
had hoodwinked, were to be led peacefully in the interests of British 
rule in Ireland. Mr. Gladstone withdrew his edict and permitted the 
creation of another delusive Will-o'-the-Wisp to lead the Irish people 
away from the only path to freedom. This new folly bore the high 
sounding title The National League. It is doing its duty well, helping the 
British Radical enemy to further enslave and degrade the Irish people, 
while his brother Britons the Tories are shipping them from the island 
in thousands. 

The news from Dublin on Sunday morning, May 7, astounded the 
world. It was at once understood by European statesmen ; it conveyed 
to them the immortal truth that Irish nationality still lived, though 
clouded by agitation for a time. It brought Ireland to the foreground 
as a possible factor in any war with Britain. Immediately prior to this 
event Ireland appeared before the liberty-loving peoples as a country 
that had lost its nationality and was only agitating for bread; a dis- 
contented province whining over its sores and begging for more alms 
and impossible benefits to come from British land legislation, including 
a local provincial parliament under the tyrant shadow of the British 
crown. 

But all at once, giantlike, she sprung from the grave. This deed in the 
Phoenix Park was the act of a brave people, who determined to have no 
compromise with the enemy. Their cry was " liberty or death!" They 



560 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

demanded the departure of their foreign tyrants or else they were deter- 
mined on speedy and instant "suppression." It was a daring act, the 
advance courier of a war for independence. Every liberty-loving news- 
paper in Europe applauded the Irish. They were advised to go on with 
the war they had inaugurated and never surrender until Britain pulled 
down her flag from their nation. They were told they would not be 
unassisted in the struggle, that they would not be left to fight it out alone. 
The foreign monarchical journals in alliance with Britain were com- 
pelled to admit that this tragic incident was full of grave importance to 
Great Britain ; that that nation had found a new and more destructive 
foe to destroy her rule in Ireland ; that the act itself and its surround- 
ings heralded new and more desperate tactics than anything recorded in 
the annals of modern Irish history. 

To the public teachers and leaders of Irish thought it may be 
said that this heroic event came to its own and its own received it not. 
Leading Irishmen over the world secretly rejoiced, applauding heartily 
in private circles, and speaking with joyful delight over what they called 
glorious news from Ireland ; at the same time many commenced denounc- 
ing what they treasured in their souls. Led away by a false diplomacy, 
they so puzzled the Irish masses that they knew not what to think. If 
these liberty-loving European journals were but translated and given to 
the Irish people to read, what a world of good to Irish freedom would 
ensue ! But hearing nothing expressed publicly but condemnation, they 
were at first confused. By and by an inkling of the real meaning of 
these denunciations was revealed to them, and many of the people were 
persuaded that the proper way to serve Ireland was by denouncing the 
actions of her patriots and condemning truth and upholding falsehood. 

This unreal and insincere condemnation created in the native 
American mind and in the mind of all free peoples the false opinion that 
Irish patriots did not approve of the Phoenix Park " suppression," when 
the very contrary was the case. Not only did it receive approval in the 
highest and most cultured circles of Irish-American patriots, but an in- 
dorsement and a hearty sanction that was unmistakable. But the false 
policy — called diplomacy — of public denunciation was continued by men 
who applauded in their own circles. Britain's work of slander was helped 
by these mistaken men. A cloud of black prejudice was created — which 
was born of that hypocritical and cowardly proclamation, some of which 
is falling back crushingly on the Parnellites, who first in a moment of 
panic and driveling fright started the calumny against the brave military 
Parnellites who carried out implicitly their instructions and policy. 

Oh ! that Ireland had a truly national literature to sweep aside the ava- 
lanche of lies and distorted information, poisoned at its source, with which 
the British drown the intelligence of mankind ! One gleam, one little 
gleam of light in the black darkness of falsehood — something to evolve 
out of chaos the truth to crush this mountain of deception and slander ! 
How eagerly, and with what avidity, the Irish race would seek to quench 
their thirst, if such a pure fountain of knowledge was within their reach ! 

When the news reached the Invincible Executive they were astounded 
and surprised at the speedy result. They did not expect such perfect 
success coming so close on previous failures. They knew nothing of 

K 's plans or the manner by which the Dublin men were to carry out 

their orders. 

K had been absent from headquarters for some time, and he was 

the channel through which news from Dublin reached them. Q was 

in bed when a friend startled him with the news he was overjoyed to 

hear of the results in Dublin. The night before J was complaining 

to him of the inaction in that city. J and Q met on Monday 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 561 

night when each had read the reports of the public press. It was related 

by prominent Parnellites of J , that he wished to get the names of 

the four men on the car, so that he could present each with a gold medal. 
If this story is true, this valiant gentleman evidently had a strange 
element of fancy in his composition. Think of four men wearing in 
Dublin city gold medals for an act of war against the foe, under the nose 

of his officials and the tyranny that lived under his flag ! J left on 

a visit to one or two of the leading Parnellites, his colleagues on the 
Directory. For some mysterious reason he then disappeared, and the 
Invincible movement knew him no more, as he left for distant lands and 
so leaves this history. The only two members of the Invincible Execu- 
tive not Provincialists had ceased to be members, one by voluntary and 
unexplained departure, the other by an unfortunate illness. 

The Directory made no attempt to communicate with K , which he 

expected they would do on receipt of the news through the public press. 
He was compelled on Tuesday to open communication with the Parnel- 
lites. The day after the suppression, Sunday, K and the captain and 

lieutenant of the sacred band met. They were mutually gratified to see 
each other ; an electric shock of pleasure tingled through the veins of 
K as he grasped the hand of his heroic lieutenant, and the brave cap- 
tain of the sacred band. It was decided at this council that all conversation 
in connection with the incident had closed, and should be forbidden among 
the men ; that all mention of the names of the four men who drove off, by 
those who knew them, would be considered treason to the cause if spoken 
by any Invincible. The two members of the council who had ceased to 
be summoned for consultation, but who were otherwise very properly con- 
sidered as valuable and patriotic men, were to attend a conference that 
Sunday afternoon. It was decided and ordered that they receive no more 
knowledge of the previous night's thrilling episode than that which they 
already possessed. This conference was to convey general orders to the 
sacred band, to be transmitted by the council through their sub-officers 
to the Invincible soldiers, impressing upon them the necessity for the 
most rigid silence on recent events, and for each man to quietly resume 

his normal peaceful duties for the present. K , after this council, 

visited Carey, who was delighted to greet him and was in ecstacies over 

the previous evening's success. K instructed him to attend at a certain 

house that afternoon, there to meet his three comrades and confer upon 

future arrangements. Carey was unaware of K 's conference with the 

officers of the sacred band. It was simply unnecessary information. 

The Council was held that afternoon and the necessary orders promul- 
gated. The Dublin Invincibles were surprised and amazed when on 
Monday morning the walls of the Irish metropolis were placarded with 
the Parnellite proclamation giving their moral support and basely tender- 
ing their allegiance to the enemy. The men were incensed and indignant 
to see these proclamations posted up alongside Spencer's offering ^10,000 
($50,000) for their capture. 

When K saw this infamous and treasonable proclamation he was 

astounded, following so quickly after the dispatch sent him from the 
agent of the Parnellite Government, authorizing action, and received as 
already related the previous Friday. Was this hypocrisy, or was it the 
outcome of dissensions among the statesmen guiding the Irish nation ? 
He was inclined to think it was the former, spurred on by nervous fear of 
personal consequences. No matter what the motives were that prompted 
this action, he felt that in the face of sympathizing Europe it was bad 
policy, and would tend to make Irish nationality contemptible in the eyes 
of the manlier races, who were watching the struggle with anxiety for 
Irish success. 



562 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The Times, which unceasingly slanders Irish patriots, and vulture-like 
screams for Irish blood, justifies resistance to oppressive rule in the case 
of the Italians. It writes : "The destiny of a nation ought to be deter- 
mined not by the opinions of other nations, but by the opinion of the 
nation itself. To decide whether they are well governed or not, or rather 
whether the degree of extortion, corruption, and cruelty to which they are 
subject is sufficient to justify armed resistance, not for those who, being 
exempt from its oppression, feel a sentimental or theological interest in 
its continuance." 

This is a description of Ireland under the hated rule of the British, and 
fully indorses from the mouth of the enemy the position of the Invincibles. 
It is the Times' justification for the 6th of May, which was the offspring 
of " extortion, corruption, and cruelty" practiced by each successive Chief 
Secretary, and which is a part of the system— an integral position of alien 
dominion in Ireland. 

On Thursday K heard from the Invincible Administration. Some- 

thing serious he feared might possibly happen through a careless mistake 

of their agent which K did his best to remedy. He had reasons to 

think it likely that through this error the suspicions of the enemy might 
be aroused against himself. In the event of such an emergency he thought 
it best not to again see the Invincible officers previous to his departure 
from Ireland, as he could not be certain his movements were not now 
watched. He did not wish to cause any unnecessary or what might be 
unfounded alarm by communicating the reason for these suspicions. He 

decided in communicating with them through his friend P , sending 

his confirmation of previous instructions. 

He left Dublin on Thursday night after a prolonged stay in that city, 
during which he had very serious duties and important missions to carry 
out. 

Shortly after his arriving in the city where headquarters was located, 

he promptly dispatched a confidential messenger to Q , informing that 

gentleman of his return and telling his friend that as soon as he would 
think it prudent to come and see him. 

K knew that this message would be conveyed to the Directory, 

telling them of his safe arrival in town. 

On Saturday morning Q called, and when he saw K his whole 

face denoted admiration and enthusiasm ; holding out both hands he 

exclaimed : " My God, I envy you ! " In return K was truly glad to 

meet his friend once again. Q had a number of things to relate, and 

several interesting matters about prominent Invincibles and prominent 

Provincialists. Some of these sketches K had been made acquainted 

with by his old friend F ; of this Q was unaware. Q also 

informed his friend that he had a very satisfactory and cordial message 

from G , a leading and very influential member of the Invincible 

Government. 

K then informed his visitor of the serious mistake made in com- 
municating with him, and of the prompt necessity of at once sending a 
message to the officer in command at Dublin. K immediately com- 
municated with his friend P , giving that officer certain duties to carry 

out, which he had told him of before leaving. 

Q W as so overjoyed at the Dublin success that he was unusually 

enthusiastic. He said that K should be placed on the Directory ; 

but this was a question for superior authority.* The two friends left 

* The brave, energe.tic, and truly patriotic Irishman and prominent Parnellite official 

written of here as Q has received the scantiest courtesy, coupled with the vilest 

insinuations from the prominent Parnellites who took part in the recent farce called the 
" Times' Special Tribunal," or some such title. His faithfulness to these men, and his 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 563 

together to pay some visits. K was rather reluctant, but at length 

consented. The first place they visited was the Parnellite chamber of 
" legal agitation." 

In a few days news was brought K which he heard with regret. 

It was a government order that for the present all action against the 
British enemy should cease. The administration had decided to give the 
invaders of Ireland a breathing spell, to declare a truce until the new 

officials of the invader became especially hostile. K received these 

orders in silence. He was thunderstruck at their gross stupidity ; it was 
in direct violation of the Invincible constitution as he understood it. Ire- 
land's war of defense, as an answer to her enemy's brutal war of exter- 
mination, should never cease once it had been inaugurated, until the foe 
drew off his bloodhounds. The same arrogant enemy oppressed their 
bleeding nation and would continue to try and more securely manacle her, 
and crush her dawning spirit of resistance. There was nothing further 

said about placing K on the Directory. Probably with the new spirit 

displayed by the Administration they thought he might advocate a more 
sanguinary policy than in their then frame of mind they were inclined to 
sanction. 

From this time forth, gradually and almost unconsciously (a type of 
dying Ireland), the Executive seemed to melt away. It was plain to 

K that weak influences from both the outside and inside were sapping 

the energy of the noble patriots, who conceived and carried out the 
God-like idea of inaugurating and persisting in carrying on a desperate 
hand to hand struggle with the butchers of the Irish nation. 

During this period K from time to time met many prominent 

Provincialists, but nothing of import came from these casual interviews. 

The Invincible organization in Ulster, Munster, and Connaught was 

more directly under the supervision of G , one of the ablest members of 

the Invincible Government. But as it made no record of any moment 
it was feared something was wrong. Clifford Lloyd still reveled in 
uncontrolled tyranny, but there might be many reasons why this foreign 
persecutor escaped unscathed. 

At length there came news that a local tyrant and one of the enemy's 
cavalry soldiers, who was one of this village tyrant's guard, were shot at 
a place called Castle Taylor, Ardrahan, near Gort, Co. Galway. This " sup- 
pression " took place on Thursday, June 8. The man slain was Walter 
M. Bourke ; he had been in the enemy's service in another country where 
British tyranny rides roughshod over the natives. India is an excellent 
school to turn out village despots, a country ruled by a single autocrat 
sent out from Britain. Mr. Bourke, after spending some years in Cal- 
cutta, returned to Ireland and commenced a system of slave-driving 
and evicting which brought upon him the bitter feelings of the country 
round. Not content with his local tyrannies, he insulted the Irish nation, 
and challenged the people to resistance. He evidently despised the people 
and had a contempt for their courage. He went abroad displaying arms 
on his person, and carried a double-barreled gun. This walking arsenal 
entered Claremorris church to attend mass, with this ponderous weapon 
in his arms. On his entering the people rose and left the building. But 
Bourke reckoned without his host. Acting under orders, the Invincibles 
determined that they would attack him and his military escort. On this 

devotion even at the risk of his life to carrying out their programme, has met with the foulest 
and most base ingratitude. A small circumstance, brought to light by a certain very 
prominent man during his evidence, showed the smallness, the littleness of soul possessed by 
this creature. To what loathsomeness can constitutional agitation, followed up by contact 
and intimacy with ex-British coercers and criminals, pollute the minds, and distort the 
intellects of these men ! 



564 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Thursday morning, accompanied by one of the military troopers belong- 
ing to his guard, Corporal Albert Wallace of the British Royal Dragoons, 
himself and his escort were shot down by the Invincibles. The whole 
neighborhood felt that a deadly foe to human liberty had been "sup- 
pressed." The enemy's Castle Administration issued a proclamation and 
offered ^1000 reward, but British gold as usual was powerless to pur- 
chase a traitor from the Invincible ranks. Owing to the number of irreg- 
ular organizations that British tyranny in Ireland creates, it was not 
known at headquarters, when first the news was published, whether or not 
this was the work of the national organization. But a dispatch from 

G informed the Invincibles at headquarters that the men in the west 

were awake and active. All were greatly pleased that the country Invin- 
cibles were displaying energy. 

It was late in June when K had business of a private nature in 

Dublin. He was very uneasy at his long absence from that city, and 
anxious to meet his brave comrades. He knew that they must have many 
strange conjectures as to the reason of his long silence. 

Owing to the error made in communicating with him on May n he 
could not with prudence see any of the officers, until he felt sure the 
enemy was not on the alert. P carried his farewell messages. 

On his arrival in Dublin he saw both the first and second officers of the 
Invincibles ; they met like friends of twenty years' acquaintance. How 
close does mutual danger and the common cause of country knit the 
bonds of friendship ! 

The captain of the sacred band told K that he was wondering at 

his long silence, thinking that he had gone abroad. He felt certain that 

his not communicating with them was part of the Executive policy. M 

had been anxious to get some news of K , so he applied to P , who 

had no news and requested his inquirer not to be uneasy. 

He told K of calling and visiting a prominent Provincialist whom 

he had known as an I. R. B. man, and from the drift of the conversation 

and the information he gave him of the men, it was plain to K that 

the bonds of discipline needed a little tightening. 

The cause of all this was the grave error committed by the Executive 
in declaring this extraordinary truce, and also leaving the men unvisited. 

Irishmen who are prominent in national movements and occupy 
responsible posts should be very careful that they neglect no duty. 
When those who are at the head of a great patriotic movement weaken in 
any way or relax their vigilance, the officers of a lesser rank are liable to 
fall into the same error. Feeling themselves neglected they may lose 
that respect without which discipline cannot be enforced in Irish patriots ; 
this must be spontaneous. 

K felt the possible need, in case of an emergency, to have in Dublin 

another independent organization of Invincibles to aid the sacred band, 
should occasion require it ; Dublin at that time was an excellent field for 
recruiting. The Phoenix Park " suppression " inspirited many men ; among 

these were several of K 's old-time revolutionary friends of Fenian 

days, men who had stood aside from Irish business for years. They were 
eager to join a practical movement that meant active service against the 
enemy, and in a feasible manner serve their suffering country. These 
new recruits enrolled by K were all Nationalists, and the most valu- 
able men for work of an active and dangerous nature. He gave two of 
these authority to enroll recruits among their revolutionary friends, 
thus forming the nucleus of two additional bands, which he purposed 
keeping distinct from the men who had been already engaged. The 
sacred band were now veterans, true and tried men. 

The leaders of the new bands in process of formation were men in a 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 565 

walk of life superior to the average revolutionary recruit, and combining 
education and intelligence of a high order with daring and patriotism, 
which would make these newly enrolled men invaluable soldiers to the 
Irish cause. 

During this visit K met the officers of the sacred band together. 

Nothing of importance took place. 

Toward the end of the following month, July, a number of Irishmen 
were arrested by the enemy as suspects. This was supposed to be in 
consequence of the execution of an I. R. B. traitor named Kenny. 
Among the men arrested were some Invincibles. 

The Administration seemed at this time very fearful that the enemy 
might discover some traces of the Phoenix Park affair, and were alarmed 

at some of the arrests. Q called on K in a very anxious manner ; 

he had been speaking to some of the Executive the day before, and they 

decided that a lady messenger should visit Dublin ; K was positively 

forbidden to go himself. 

A lady volunteered and carried out her mission successfully, and as 
K conjectured, there was no cause for the Executive's fright. 

In the early days of August Q visited Dublin, partly on a pleasure 

trip, and to be present at the unveiling of the O'Connell monument. He 

got the necessary instructions from K and paid a friendly visit to 

some of the Dublin Invincibles. Unfortunately he was known as a Par- 
nellite official, and the visit gave rise to unnecessary talk. It even reached 

the prison where some of the men were confined. Q , who was a 

sterling patriot, had no purpose but a friendly one, but several of the 
Executive did not approve of it. A kind of ghostly terror seemed to 
haunt these men over every trifle. 

After Q 's return from Dublin he paid an important visit to two 

prominent Parnellites, members of the Invincible Directory. They were 
very pleased to see him ; he gave them all the details he was acquainted 
with in relation to the 6th of May. 

Q was presented by these gentlemen with some handsome gifts 

as a testimonial of approval for the success of the Park incident. Among 
these was a beautiful photographic album, which played an important 
part later in giving the enemy information as to the personality of a 
prominent Invincible. He was also presented- with gifts for the noble and 
courageous lady who carried the weapons to Dublin, including some 
pretty trinkets for the recent lady emissary. 

The enemy's Lord Lieutenant in Ireland at this time, as a 
Cabinet Minister, was performing those duties usually transacted in the 
Chief Secretary's office. The then Chief Secretary, Trevelyan, was only 
partially in charge of his bureau. Spencer in a great measure controlled 
the Castle murder conspiracy. The assassination of Irishmen by the 
mock legal machine became worse daily. The brutal murder of Francis 
Hynes appalled the community ; the public perjury of infamous wretches 
who swore to order for British gold was so flagrant that even the most 
moderate Provincialist felt outraged. 

This naked despotism aroused the Invincible Government to a sense of 
its duty, and they threw off for a time the lethargy which enwrapped them 
since the 6th of May. They ordered the re-commencement of hostilities. 
K , when about to resume his command in Dublin, was grievously dis- 
appointed at the orders given to him. The duties were not of the impor- 
tance that the crisis demanded. It was evident that timidity still ruled in 

their councils. However, K was glad for the success of the cause 

that hostilities were about to reopen, and that the government of legiti- 
mate self-defense was about to answer the Castle murder conspiracy 
by striking at one of the conspirators. He hoped that by action the 



566 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

stronger men in the Invincible Executive would find their hands 
strengthened and so be able to force the issue to a further advanced step. 
The Parnellites, through their Dublin organ, were abusing Spencer in every 
possible key. Yet the Invincible commander could get no authority from 
the Invincible Parnellite Executive to strike at the head of this tyranny. 
The suppressing of one of the minor tyrants was work unworthy of the 
cause, but obedience is the first duty of a soldier. 

The murder of Francis Hynes was followed by other judicial crimes. 
The Kilmainham treaty brought to Ireland only those unhappy results 
after the great claim of victory. As well might one attempt to guarantee 
the safety of the lamb from the jaws of the tiger as to expect that any 
combination or treaty could prevail on Britain to change her nature, and 
abide by any compact which, with her usual perfidy toward Ireland, she 
had previously determined to violate in all its parts. Irishmen should 
never make treaties with any British parties, either Gladstone's or Salis- 
bury's ; their perfidy toward Ireland is proverbial. Irish patriots should 
be prepared to descend to the tomb with arms in their hands, as becomes 
men resolved to combat for the freedom of their nation ; to overthrow the 
baneful and oppressive foreign yoke, and liberate their country. In 
doing this they will have performed a sacred duty, called for no less by the 
obligations of religion than the progress of civilization. Ireland has no 
alternative between victory and extermination. 

At the close of September K left for Dublin to resume command 

of the Invincibles, and with orders from the Invincible Government to 
commence certain active operations. 

His first visit in that city was to P , who informed the young 

lieutenant of the sacred band, now its leader, that K was in town. 

They met next day ; the pleasure was mutual. They had a long con- 
ference together, and in the following evening K arranged to meet 

the temporarily appointed council at the new rendezvous. Although 

K 's appearance was known to these three men, it was their first 

personal meeting. That night he formed the acquaintance of as noble 
a specimen of young Irish patriotism as lived in the sacred band. This 
brave young man carried himself with dignity in the enemy's dock and to- 
day for his patriotic service to his country he toils in the dungeons of her 
merciless invader. 

The instructions given K by the Directory were matters by no 

means of the first importance. The young lieutenant received his orders 
to make preliminary arrangements to see about having them promptly 
obeyed. The British having their new coercion machine in energetic 
operation, the old " Suspect" Act expired at the end of September, and all 
those Irishmen who had not passed through the mockery of a trial, who 
were merely suspects, were set free. Among those released were im- 
prisoned Invincibles. Those who had been members of the Council, 

K arranged to see separately, and in different localities, for although 

K was free from the smallest shade of suspicion on the part of the 

enemy, his being seen in the company of any of these men, who were 
likely to be under espionage, might hamper his future movements. The 

first of these he saw was M . This noble fellow had many things to 

say of the events that had transpired since their last meeting. He spoke of 
a serious indiscretion which was committed by one of the rank and file, 
and commented on Carey's conduct in creating a stupid scene when 

arrested in Grafton Street, all of which gave K food for reflection and 

much annoyance of mind, not with this patriotic man for the statements 
which his duty compelled him to relate, but that these things should be. 

The next day K met James Carey. This man, who was always 

glad to meet him, was as enthusiastic as usual. Carey then told him of 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 567 

the missing arms that must have been seized by the enemy. This was 

not news to K , both Q and he had heard it through the enemy's 

indiscreet boasting of having discovered in the person of a Dublin 
mechanic the leader of the Park affair, and which position the foe wished 

to assign to Carey all through. K then told Carey that while his 

obligations to the Invincibles would continue as long as that organization 
was in existence, for the present he would relieve him from all duty. 
This was necessary, not only for his own safety, but what was of 
paramount importance, the cause of the country and the welfare of the 
patriotic movement carrying on war against the foe. At any time he 

wished to see K for any purpose he could do so by communicating 

with the lieutenent of the sacred band. Carey promised obedience, but 

looked very sad and unhappy when he heard this order. He bade K 

good-by, and went off in the direction ordered. They never exchanged a 

word from that day. K met Carey in Dublin on two occasions some 

time afterward, but discipline at all times kept any of the men from speak- 
ing to him at these chance meetings. K , although feeling it necessary 

from a sense of duty to suspend Carey, had not the faintest suspicion of 
his loyalty, and very justly so, for Carey was as faithful to Ireland up to 
his arrest and long after as the most patriotic of her sons. There was a 
public reward of $50,000 offered by the foe, which had not the slightest 
influence on any of these true-hearted Irishmen. Let us think with pity 
and regret of the sad fate of this unhappy man, and feel more determined 
and bitter to endeavor to overthrow the accursed rule that makes such 
fallen weakness and perfidy in once good and true men possible. 

K left Dublin to acquaint the Directory of the serious indiscre- 
tion committed by one of the men as told him by the captain. This was- 

variously commented on at headquarters. Y , the member of the 

Directory who previous to the foundation of the Invincibles volunteered 
to shoot Forster, appeared to look upon this as a matter of course. It is 
the cardinal doctrine of the teachings which produce Provincialists that 

in all revolutionary bodies traitors are to be found, and Y , although 

a sound Irishman and a member of the Invincible Directory, was and is to 
this day (1887) a prominent Parnellite member of the enemy s Parliament. 

The rflatter was referred to a gentleman who was the most influential 
and powerful of the men belonging to the Invincible Government. Had 
every member of that Administration his pure patriotism, determination, 
and courage, the tragic and melancholy fiasco which closed the movement 
would not have occurred. But he and his confreres were hampered and 
weighted by wavering colleagues, and also by powerful outside influences 
which destroyed their native resolution ; for it must be remembered they 
were also prominent and influential Provincialists, one of them a prominent 
and leading member of the enemy's Parliament, which must have sometimes 
clashed with his duty to the Invincibles. In giving the true history of 
this patriotic Irish organization and refuting its slanderers and Ireland's, — 
for the honor of the movement is wedded to that of the nation whose 
authorities created it, — the present writer wishes to speak of these patriots 
with the deepest and most profound respect. 

In a few days a message came from G and H , stating that if on 

legal investigation the offense charged against the Invincible was proved, 
he should be executed ; there was no possible alternative. This order was 

given to K personally by a gentleman he had never met previously. 

He had often heard of him as an able and prominent Parnellite, and a 
patriotic Irishman. ■ It was their first and last meeting as Invincibles. 

Q , whom K always saw and reported to when returning from 

Dublin, approved the order. On these matters this patriotic Irishman was 
right. 



$68 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

K returned to Dublin with a sad feeling ; to smite the foe was to 

him a sacred religion, but this mission of examining into treason was most 
painful. He summoned a council on his arrival in Ireland's metropolis, 
and entered into an investigation of the charges against the Invincible 
soldier. It was discovered on examination that a mistake was made ; the 

man was completely exonerated, to K 's relief and the gratification of 

all concerned. It must be written here that in the ranks of the Invincibles 
there was not one man to betray it to the enemy. No British gold could 
corrupt one of these incorruptible and faithful men. Through the weak- 
ness of their Parnellite Executive came the weakness of some of those 
arrested. Had the Invincible Government consisted of strong men, and 
all as daring as the sacred band, modern Irish history would have been 
altered. 

The Dublin officer N , who originally presided at the council and 

who was in prison for some time, was one of the recently released men. 
Except through one interview before his assuming command of the Dublin 

Invincibles, K had no personal knowledge of this man. His daring 

and bravery had always been the theme of the captain of the sacred 
band, who was a fast friend of his. The younglieutenant of the band told 

K that this man N was much hurt at being left aside completely. 

It was evident that N did not understand the reason for this, and as 

he was a good and patriotic man, who should not be allowed to feel he was 

neglected, K told the lieutenant that he would meet him, appointing 

the time and place. N and K met as arranged. . 

N had a number of complaints and suggestions for K 's ear ; he 

dwelt with bitterness and sarcasm (using as much of the latter as he could 
master) on the sending of a lady to Dublin with weapons to the men, and 
appeared to fear that some dangerous gossip would arise from the use of 

female messengers. K assured him that if every man in the ranks was 

as secretive and patriotic as the lady who had carried the arms to the 

Invincibles they would be as silent as the sphinx; he further gratified N 

"by telling him that as long as the Invincible Government continued him 

(K ) in command of the revolutionary soldiers in Dublin, that any 

weapons required to carry on the struggle against the invader should be 

brought into Dublin by himself. N was anxious for active wo/k, which 

K promised him soon, but for the present he would have to remain in 

the ranks. K also made an appointment to meet the released Invin- 
cible O , who was a warm-hearted, impulsive, but patriotic Irishman. 

He was at all times ready to sacrifice his life in the cause of his mother- 
land. K met him with great pleasure; he told him that for the present 

the necessities of the situation would compel him to stand aside, that for 
some time he could take no part with the Invincibles, as the enemy had 

him a marked man. He knew how to communicate with him, K , 

when he needed to do so. After a little time, when the foe was baffled, he 
would be placed on active service again. The latter hope cheered this 
brave fellow, who felt stricken at the order and looked grieved. He 

obeyed cheerfully, and kindly asked K to come and see him. K 

pointed out the impossibility of any social intercourse between men 
engaged in such desperate enterprises as theirs. They parted and have 
never met each other since. 

During this time P had received instructions to assist the young 

lieutenant of the Invincibles in getting a thorough knowledge of the 

tyrant whose suppression was ordered by the Directory. P was 

invaluable in this kind of work ; his coolness and means of getting infor- 
mation were of great assistance. 

The officers of the sacred band heard from several sources that the 
prominent officials of the enemy, who were at that time openly and osten- 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 569 

tatiously guarded by a number of armed men, also wore bullet-proof shirts 
as an additional precaution against their unseen foe. This revolutionary 
war had now assumed a semi-open appearance of defense as well as assault 
on the part of the British army. They knew their Irish foe was looking 
for a chink in their armor to pierce it. And like a blinded giant they did 

not know where to strike. L told K that they might need a more 

powerful weapon than those that they were armed with, and wished K 

to procure a few for any special attack on those of the enemy who wore 

shirts of mail. K left Dublin at once to procure these. When he 

reached headquarters he communicated as usual with Q , and told him 

what was required in Dublin. As it was not considered prudent for K 

to make these purchases personally, Q sent for a gentleman, one of 

the official staff of the Parnellites engaged in legal agitation, but 
who was also an Invincible, to buy the needed weapons. This man was 
one who would have been a splendid soldier for active work, a man of 
superior intelligence, and having the courage of his race ; but unfortunately 
he was too well known to the enemy, who, as a proof of their disappro- 
bation, some time before imprisoned him. He procured a number of the 
most powerful revolvers of large calibre that could be purchased. 

The Irish soldiers in Dublin had an ample supply of ammunition to 
suit the weapons, so that there was no necessity to procure cartridges. 

Q retained two of these weapons ; the remainder K brought 

in his valise to Dublin, traveling, "strange to say, with a genial, gentlemanly 
man en route there, who was a colonel in the enemy's army posted in the 
west of Ireland. This good gentleman would have been very much sur- 
prised if he had learned that an officer of the Irish foe was the compagnon du 

voyage he was so affable to. K entered Dublin perfectly safe with 

the arms, although the enemy was especially watchful at this period, and 
had imported a number of Royal Marines to do police duty in that city. 
This was corroboration, if such was needed, of the unnecessary sending of 
a lady in the first instance with weapons. These revolvers were taken 

out of K 's valise and packed in good sized satchels, and given by 

him to P to deliver at the new place of meeting of the local council. 

K attended the following evening, showing the Invincible officers a 

slight peculiarity in the mechanism. 

P , who was superintending several matters in connection with the 

coming " suppression," made a report to K of all the details. A 

strong mutual friendship and respect had sprung up between P and 

the two officers L and M . One morning P and K paid 

a visit to the Dublin exhibition as it was about to be closed. K had 

no social intercourse with the Dublin Invincibles, P , who was a 

personal friend, excepted. They had no knowledge whatever as to who 
he was, nor did they seek to learn it. This morning when these two men 
reached the top of Sackville, now O'Connell Street, near the Rotunda, they 
met the British Lord Lieutenant, followed by his escort, a half troop of 
the enemy's cavalry. He had evidently come from the Viceregal Lodge 
and was riding down Rutland Square to Sackville Street, en route to the 
Castle. The Red Earl was in front of the main body of his escort, two 
troopers a little in advance of him, and an officer riding at each side. At 
this time the despotism of this man of blood had horrified all Ireland. 
The open employment of hired ruffians, who, by perjured evidence and 
the packing of twelve rebels as jurymen, gave an apparent legal pretext 
for hanging men in no way implicated in what they were accused of, had 
startled the community. " The Bloody Assize," so historically named 
by United Ireland, had come and gone. Mr. Wm. O'Brien was afterward 
by Spencer's orders prosecuted for writing this scathing article denounc- 
ing his infamous rule. Nothing could be stronger proof to K 's mind 



57© THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

of the weakness and vacillation of the Invincible Directory than the fact 
that up to that moment he had received no orders to assail this tyrant, 
who was more deliberate in his path of blood as expressed in United 
Ireland than Forster. He made but few raids on the Irish members, yet 
some of them had tasted the sweetness of this invader's plank-bed. 

K felt satisfied that G and others were indirectly overruled 

by powerful influences working against them, and that timid men had 
carried their wretched policy of indecision into the government of the 
Invincibles. Many of those waverers at that time would secretly rejoice 
at the tyrant's death, but allowed " I dare not" wait upon " I will." 

As Spencer and his escort rode by it flashed upon K 's mind that 

the road from Phibsborough, before approaching the Rotunda, would 
be an admirable position of attack. The route chosen by the enemy's 
chieftain was fed by numerous arteries of side streets, where the men could 
concentrate without any unusual notice. Any assault for the present in 
the Phcenix Park was an utter impossibility. 

A concentration of a strong force of men ready at a given signal to 
assail the foe from both sides of his route would at first paralyze the 
British troopers by the unexpected and sudden assault. As Spencer was 
to be made the principal feature of the fight it was reasonable to suppose 
the enemy's chieftain would be slain in the first attack. The fight with 
the troopers would of course follow, but there the advantage ought to be 
with the sacred band and their Invincible supports. A body of daring, 
desperate men, armed with revolvers against the troopers' sabers, which by 
instinct and surprise they must have used, and Ireland's defenders would 
have the advantage in the struggle. These soldiers of the enemy were 
principally boys, who if their officers were put hors-de-combat would prob- 
ably make a stampede. That such an attack meant death to the greater 

part of the sacred band K knew well, but what a glorious death ! Most 

of these men knew that they could scarcely expect to survive the dangers 

through which their duty exposed them. K never left for Dublin but 

he was compelled to feel that there were serious chances he would never 
return. Familiarity with danger never breeds a contempt for it, but it 
unconsciously grows to be such a companion that one forgets the personal 
risks in seeking results. In a patriot whose soul is pervaded with the 
knowledge that he is engaged in a sacred and holy enterprise, a religion, 
a worship of the purity and grandeur of the great cause of Country, fills 
his soul with lofty motives, with a stoicism and determination that smiles 
at death and only longs for triumph. What signified the sacrifice of the 
whole sacred band compared with the victory of Ireland ! The supreme 
effort to crush out in blood and carnage her tyrant murderer's life, and 
this in broad daylight in the center of the city ! Think of the blow that 
it would deal at the invader's heart! Again, as on the 6th of May, crowning 
Ireland's patriotic soldiers with fresh laurels, once more striking down 
British supremacy from their land. 

And think of the immortal lessons of freedom such an attack would 
bring to the nation ; the sight of cold steel, and blood smoking hot, would 
inspire the people and contradict the coward teachings of weak Provin- 
cialists ! What if the bodies of the sacred band filled up the trench that 
guards the ramparts of freedom, were there not more men to mount this 
bloody breastwork, and keep on the glorious struggle ? Thank God, 
there are to-day and always in Ireland thousands of men at all times 
ready. If some pioneers but only lead the way on into the gap of slaugh- 
ter, in spite of the so-called constitutional teaching, gaining freedom by 
installments and all the boshy rot foisted on the people under the sacred 
name of nationality, Irishmen are not cowards. 

This attack on the passing tyrant K felt a fierce longing for as 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 57 1 

the cavalcade passed by. What if even all the brave fellows and himself 
were killed? "The blood of men fighting for freedom is never shed in 
vain — the earth will not cover it ; from the ground it cries aloud and the 
avenger knoweth his day and his hour. It is through this bloody travail 
and by virtue of this baptism of fire, and only so. that nations ever spring 
forth, great, generous and free." 

When the Red Earl and his troopers had passed by, K communi- 
cated his thoughts to P , who espoused his plan warmly. He said he 

could see no insurmountable obstacle in suppressing the foreign despot by 
a bold attack, which would paralyze his escort, as was witnessed when 
Miss Anna Parnell caught his bridle reins one morning in Westmoreland 
Street, and stopped him to plead mercy for the houseless, which his coun- 
try's accursed rule had sent on the wayside. Let the Invincibles but 
bravely assault, and with loaded arms blot out the tyrant's life, come 
what may to them once success was achieved. 

That evening K saw the captain and lieutenant of the sacred 

band, and told them of his resolve to attack Spencer and his escort. 
These officers received the news with fierce joy ; the face of the brave 
young lieutenant glowed with delight, and his eyes sparkled. This 
tyrant and his red-coated escort were foes that they felt were worthy of 
their steel. 

The captain thought that they could not make the opening of their 
attack so effective and paralyzing by firearms alone ; hand-grenades or 
Orsini bombs, he considered, would create such havoc and disaster in the 
enemy's ranks that it would be half the victory. A sadden attack by 
armed men to follow the explosion and quick as lightning the invader's 

force would be slain or dispersed. K saw the full force of the picture 

drawn, the panic and confusion that would permeate the ranks of the 
invader as one or two outside cars drove rapidly by, like war chariots 
sweeping along death and destruction to the foe. Seated on the side next 
the enemy could be placed Invincible soldiers, who at the moment of con- 
tact would fling into the centre of Spencer's British Guard these deadly 
missiles. 

K knew there was one serious drawback with shells in the hands 

of untrained men, and that was the danger of premature explosion. The 
Invincibles had been asking for these bombs since K first took com- 
mand in Dublin, and although he made their request known at head- 
quarters, backed up by his own urgent wish that they be sent to Dublin 
for emergencies, the Executive through either neglect or disapproval took 
no notice of these many demands. But now that an event of the first im- 
portance to Ireland, the striking down red-handed the foreign tyrant who 
was aiming at the Irish nation's life, seemed to hinge for its success on 

the procuring of shells, K determined he would strain every energy 

to supply the sacred band with these destructive missiles. 

A short time previous to this meeting with the Red Earl's cavalcade 
Q came to Dublin to attend the funeral of a relative. He communi- 
cated with K . Nothing of importance occurred ; it was a mere friendly 

visit, but K availed himself of the opportunity of making Q and 

P acquainted, as the former so wished, 

P and the young lieutenant of the Invincibles discovered that 

Lawson, the Castle conspirator, whose suppression was ordered by the 
Executive, was not only well guarded in the city, but also had a large force 
of Constabulary concentrated near his country residence acting as a mili- 
tary guard every night. These men patrolled the grounds and guarded 
every possible avenue of attack. It is one of the romantic sides of this 
Invincible war that all this information the young lieutenant of the 
sacred band succeeded in gettmg from the sergeant in charge of Law- 



572 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

son's guard, through the help of P , who personally knew the 

sergeants, and, as if by accident, visited the police barracks, where 
himself and his friend were received most hospitably, and were invited 
to stop over for dinner. It was during this meal that for purposes of 

gossip this news was given to P and the Invincible officer. After 

dinner they were brought round the grounds and shown the position and 
the vigilance necessary to protect Lawson. The Constabulary officers of 
course never dreamt that their visitors were Invincibles, and had not the 

faintest suspicion they were giving unasked the very information P 

and L , the officer of the sacred band, went there to get. Lawson's 

life would not be worth the force necessary to attack him at his country 

residence, and so K decided that the city was the proper place to 

make the assault. 

News came that Lawson was to dine on a certain Saturday night at a 
so-called legal dinner in Henrietta Street. It was decided that he should 
be attacked on Stephen's Green with his armed escort of seven men. 

During the interval that elapsed since K 's visit in June, the work 

of organizing other Invincibles went on in Dublin. One of these bands 
had grown into a respectable size, almost as numerous as the sacred band, 
having its sub-officers and their men under distinct control. 

The other of these new Invincible organizations was not so numerous, 
but it contained men very eager for active work, who urged their officer 
to offer their services to help any premeditated attack upon the foe. The 

night for attacking Lawson came, and K told the officer of this small 

band of Invincibles to select four of his best men and come with them to 
the rendezvous, well armed and ready to obey orders, which they would 
receive on the ground. The captain and lieutenant of the sacred band 
were made aware of the presence of this new force, which information 
pleased them very much. These officers were ordered to keep their 
existence a secret. 

One of the sentinels was posted to signal the departure of Lawson from 
his residence, which signal he was to pass to another ; each alternate sentry 
keeping the Judge and his armed escort in sight. The first sentinel was 
seized with a species of lunacy and took it upon himself to shoot the 
Castle conspirator ; he did more, for he disarranged the previous plans 
by sending away two Invincible sentries, whom he met en route and who 
were under the impression the excited sentinel had received fresh 
orders. So stupid and blundering was this man, that he worked him- 
self into a state of strong excitement, and in attempting to shoot Lawson 
he was overpowered and captured by the Castle tyrant's guard. His 
action that night in all human probability saved Lawson's life. This man 
had no idea, not the faintest, of playing the Invincibles false, but he was 
filled with the vanity that he could slay Lawson single handed, and 
thought the opportunity too favorable to be lost. This he could have 
done if he was a cool-headed man, but he would be captured red- 
handed, which was, if possible, to be avoided according to Invincible 
laws, and which necessitated the risk of many lives, instead of the 
certainty of losing one. Another stupid error he made was that of taking 
the enemy's guard to be Invincible soldiers, for these men were then too 
numerous to be known to each other, and they were, as already mentioned, 
under the command of sub-officers, each as a separate unit in organ- 
ization. This last blunder caused him to fall an easy prey into the hands 
of the enemy. 

Meanwhile the main body of the Invincibles were patrolling the place 
decided on for the attack ; as time passed, bringing no news, they grew 
anxious ; a scout was dispatched, who reported on his return that the 
sentinels had left and that some man entered the Kildare Street Club to 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 573 

try and shoot Lawson, and was captured. This was the first incorrect 
report, and several others were purposely spread abroad by the 
enemy. The men were dismissed ; something was wrong, but what it 
was was then unknown. The officers received orders to investigate the 

cause of this mishap. K was to see L the following evening 

with his report. As soon as they learned who the enemy had arrested, 
that night two of the Invincible officers drove up to the house of a 
relative of the captured man ; from this house they speedily removed 
what Invincible arms it contained. They had not gone many minutes 
when the enemy's forces made a descent, but they discovered nothing, and 
had to depart unrewarded. 

The next morning, Sunday, K , who was anxious to learn who the 

captured man was, left at an early hour for the house where the enemy 
made his raid. All knowledge of this raid was unknown to the Invinci- 
ble commander, and could not be conveyed to him, for with the excep- 
tion of P , none of the officers of the sacred band knew where to 

communicate with him. 

The Invincible officer whom he came to see was from home, but 

K was told he would return soon. He thought it best to wait. Hours 

passed by in painful suspense. K was about to leave when a young 

Invincible soldier came with a letter to the absent officer. K tore it 

open ; it was a note from L asking the officer to meet him at a cer- 
tain place within an hour. K immediately left for this rendezvous, 

where he heard all the details of the catastrophe. The officers were very 

much concerned when they heard at what house K had been during 

the forenoon, as they informed him the enemy had posted spies and 
marines to watch the house. This arrest proved of vast importance to 
the enemy later on. This blunder and disobedience of the Invincible 

sentry, and to which he himself fell a victim, decided K that for the 

present they would not repeat any attacks on Lawson ; to succeed after 

this blunder would be to lose more men than K wished to risk on 

this subordinate action. He gave the next order from the Directory to 
strike at two of the rebels' jurors of the murdered Francis Hynes. This 

new order pleased N , for the brave fellow, who was utterly reckless 

of his life, was anxious to attack these hated jurors. As the matter was 

of small importance in the opinion of K , he wished to have it finished 

before beginning the grand assault on Spencer, which he knew would 
ring over the world as a bold act of Irishmen against their foe. 

K decided that no more attempts should be made on Saturday. 

Monday was selected for the attack, He ordered cold steel to be used, 
but as all the weapons similar to those used before had been destroyed, 
by order of the Administration (the cowardice of the Executive — the 
stupidity of these would-be brilliant statesmen, was hampering the brave 
soldiers in Dublin) they were compelled to use inferior weapons, which 

they tried to utilize for the occasion. K wished he had the two 

handsomely cased weapons that were in Q c s armory at headquarters. 

On the Saturday evening before the assault of these murderous jurors, 
K was startled at the news of a shooting affray in Abbey Street, Dub- 
lin. He could not understand it ; surely the bonds of discipline could 
not have suddenly broken loose, and the men taken action on their own 

account. He sent for P ,and learned the particulars of this fray. A 

certain circle of the I. R. B., without any instructions from the central 
authority, formed itself into a vigilance committee. Their purpose was to 
commence against the enemy a war similar to what some organization, 
unknown to them, had been trying to carry out. 

They had scarcely more than organized, when through some fatuity — 
either through lack of judgment or the vile effects of the enemy's teach- 



574 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

ing — these brave but unthinking men began to look into their own ranks 
for a traitor. They had no efficient leader, and the bonds of discipline 
hung upon them very lightly. They decided on suspecting one of their 
number of treason, and their first warlike attempt was to go out and 
searcli for him to shoot him. They were followed from the rendezvous 
where they met to the corner of Abbey and Sackville streets by some 
armed detectives of the enemy, as their actions were very open and very 
remarkable. These .hirelings of the invader are as a rule braggarts, and 
cowards in the face of danger. The vigilance men, seeing they were 
followed, impulsively drew their revolvers and opened fire on the foe, 
which was responded to at long range by the detectives. This exchange 
of shots was quickly followed by a hand-to-hand encounter between a 
detective and a vigilante. The detective (Constable Cox) while struggling 
with the vigilante was shot dead by a fellow constable, who aimed at the 
Irishman but shot his comrade by accident. This mishap on the enemy's 
part occurred through the nervous timidity of their man, who, like many 
of his comrades, was afraid to cross the street. Meanwhile another strug- 
gle was taking place between another detective and a vigilante. The 
enemy's instrument, seeing that the man he grappled with was armed, 
piteously begged of him not to shoot. The vigilante, when he got into 
this fight, which he should have avoided, might have pulled the trigger on 
his foe and so got away. He was tender-hearted, and so acceded to the 
other's appeal. Instead of shooting he tried by physical strength to shake 
off his enemy. A sergeant of rifles passing by at this moment and seeing 
the two men grappling, drew his sword and went to the aid of the detec- 
tive, who was loudly calling for help and proclaiming himself an officer of 
the law. When Sergeant Dan vers of the Rifles led the way, the other 
detectives on the opposite side gathered courage and crossed over, and the 
vigilante was captured. Then followed a peculiar incident. As the pris- 
oner was being brought away in a cab, the comrade whom he and his 
friend went out to shoot for fancied treason, and who of course knew 
nothing of this, came upon the scene and made an attempt to rescue the 
prisoner from his captors, but failed in the attempt, and he too was made 
a captive by the foe. The Invincible organization had nothing to do with 
this affray. But when it is considered that all these men were respectable 
mechanics, most of them men with families, who led good lives and 
looked with horror on crime and criminals, it is a sad reflection on the 
terrible evil of foreign rule in Ireland. 

That portion of the Dublin community who supply the enemy with 
magistrates and police officers, and who are linked in bonds of treason 
with the savage invader — these people, like the Tories of New York in 
Revolutionary days, magnified this petty street brawl into a British victory. 
Sergeant Danvers of the Rifles was made the hero of the hour, and a hand- 
some piece of silver plate was presented to the victorious soldier, the hero 
of this king-making victory. Accompanying this testimonial for bravery 
he received the substantial gift of a well-filled purse. The inscription on 
the piece of plate spoke of the virtues, patriotism, and the wonderful and 
extraordinary courage of this valiant soldier, who in so marvelous a 
manner drew his sword and with unflinching intrepidity went to the 
rescue of a detective struggling in the grasp of a ruffian rebel Irishman, 
while the comrades of this detective were shivering on the opposite pave- 
ment, fearing to take part in the encounter. This brave and undaunted 
British soldier, regardless of life, charged into the very jaws of death in 
defense of the British flag and its law and its order. Such like rodo- 
montade and fustian filled Monday morning's papers. 

On Tuesday morning these rebel sheets in the invader's interest had 
occasion to howl, for on Monday night the Invincibles made their pre- 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 575 

arranged attack. One of the rebel jurymen escaped by the accidence of his 
sudden departure on business from Dublin. The other who took part in 
Francis Hynes' murder was successfully struck down, but saved his life 
partly by feigning death, and more especially by the fact that the weapon 
was not suited for the work. It had been arranged for moral effect to 
strike down both jurymen simultaneously. The enemy was alarmed ; 
another panic took place this time ; it extended to the bench and the 
rebel caste from which this class of jurymen were selected. Bullet-proof 
shirts were greatly in demand and Spencer's escort was for a time 

doubled. K , having completed what could be done of the minor 

assaults ordered by the Directory, prepared to return to headquarters 
and endeavor to procure the now important shells. 

A short time before the jurymen's attack, K "had reason to deplore 

the scarcity of explosive ammunition in the Invincible arsenal. This arose 
partly from neglect and partly from the timidity of the Directory in not 
having Dublin well stocked with various kinds of war munitions at the 
founding of the organization. There was plenty of money in the treasury 
to supply all the materials of war needed, and there were plenty of brave 
men to bring them into Dublin. As soon as action was taken by the 
Invincibles in Ireland's capital, there was greater difficulty in bringing 
these in, and also greater difficulty in procuring them, but not of an insur- 
mountable nature. One of these chances came to K , which, like 

fortune's tide, if taken at the flood would have commanded great success. 

Through the absence of proper war materials, K was unable to 

avail himself of this lucky stroke of fortune which fell to his lot. Had 
he the necessary munitions, he would have been able to strike a blow at 
British invasion of his country that would have horrified the foe and 
startled mankind. But like many another favoring gale, Ireland was not 
able to reap the benefit of this unexpected and great opportunity. 

On leaving Dublin, P was left in general superintendence of affairs, 

and was to communicate with K if there was any necessity. The 

captain of the sacred band was told to take no action until K 's 

return. K wished to learn what the Directory intended to do. At 

this time the enemy commenced to redouble his vigilance. Dublin was 
literally filled with marines, spies, and detectives, and all the paraphernalia 
of his robber rule. Ireland's assassins were seriously frightened. It was 
not so much the nature of the assaults made by their mysterious opponents 
as their rapid delivery and the disappearance of their foe that struck 
terror to the heart of the Briton. What was John Bull to do ? Spencer 
was determined to have another " Bloody Assize " and offer up some 
Dublin men to the shades of the dead secretaries. It made little matter 
to the enemy whether these were the actual men engaged or not. He had 
his tribunal of slaughter ready, and could with the aid of hired perjurers 
commence the work of death. 

Shortly after K 's departure from Dublin he learned that the 

enemy had made his first move, and that several Dublin men were tem- 
porarily arrested and brought before the secret star chamber in Dublin 
Castle, and there examined against themselves under the new Crimes Bill 
Mr. Gladstone, which upset the British theory that no man is compelled to 
criminate himself. This secret star chamber, on the contrary, tried to 
compel every man before it, by what it considered the most awful threats, 
to criminate himself and to criminate each other, but the principal success 
the enemy had was in training a corps of perjurers into familiarity with 
the men's appearance, impressing on these abandoned wretches the 
personality of every man who passed before them. To what degraded 
help must the foreign usurpers stoop for the purpose of trying to preserve 
the fruits of their robbery ! The enemy made a curious group of arrests, 



576 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

I. R. B. men, Provincialists, and Invincibles ; they were simply feeling 
their way, and were groping in the dark until after they had made the 
midnight raid the following January, when by slow degrees the light came 
to them bit by bit. 

The Castle examinations gave K a great deal of anxiety, which 

was shared in by Q . K for the fiftieth time spoke of the great 

necessity of procuring shells and other explosives for Dublin. He did 

not particularize to Q what he specially needed them for, but urged 

that they be procured. But Q could do nothing to assist in this 

matter, but through no fault of his own, for this patriotic Irishman 

was most energetic, doing all that was in his power to aid K and 

the brave Dublin men. The exigencies of his position tied him down ; 
the whole Invincible movement had to carry on its back that old-man-of- 
the-sea Provincialism, which was strangling its life out. 

In this emergency F , the brave soldier who had been on the Direc- 
tory, had returned to headquarters. He had somewhat recovered from 

his serious illness, and was convalescent. K made a special private 

call upon him. F was a man K loved as a brother. To an excel- 
lent understanding and ripened experience he added the pure and ster- 
ling principles of Irish nationality. There could not be imagined a more 
perfect harmony or stronger identity of sentiment than existed between 
those two Irishmen. 

K opened his mind freely to F . This time it was his turn to 

deposit important confidence in the breast of his friend. He spoke of 
the attack on Spencer which was contemplated, subject to the sanction 

of the Invincible Government. F approved cordially in the necessity 

of striking down the enemy during his sanguinary career in Ireland — 
his riding rough shod over the people. With respect to the shells he 
said : " I think I could without much difficulty procure them for you, as 
soon as you or I receive the necessary authority. Owing to illness and 
other causes my association with the movement appears to be cut off. 
You are carrying on this business in' a subaltern manner, and although 

Q is the official agent of the Executive he is so harrassed by Parnellite 

Parliamentary duties he cannot devote the time required; besides, as you 
he say, has been asked for these shells and cannet procure them. This 
brave and noble fellow is hampered and surrounded with many cares, and 
is at present scarcely a free agent. There are, I suspect, internal struggles 
going on in certain governing circles which do not bode good to Ireland. 
Until you are prepared for action and have procured authority from 
the Government, keep this special attack a secret even from our friends. 

G and H are the two men of greatest power both in the 

Parnellite ranks and in our inner circle the Invincibles. You know 

H very well ; I am aware of this. G and you know of one 

another. First see these men and procure the shells or authority to get 
them yourself. Once you are ready lay before them your plan of action 
and receive authority for your proposed attack. Q , who is affec- 
tionately attached to you and is very anxious about the dangers you are 
exposed to, will be saved any additional care in a matter he is at present 
powerless to help. You can use your own judgment in giving him infor- 
mation of your intentions." 

K thanked F for his proffer of assistance, told him he would see 

the gentlemen spoken of, and if he found he was not properly supported 
he would at once resign his position after communicating with his men. 

The year was drawing to a close and K was much grieved at the 

reports from Dublin. One morning he was surprised to hear that P 

had come to town. He came with a special message from the Invincible 
officers ; they had reason to fear that the wife of the imprisoned Invin- 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 577 

cible was giving information (that she should never have possessed) to the 
enemy. This was an awkward dilemma and one that could not be faced 

in the ordinary way. P was sent back with word to the officers that 

the matter would receive prompt attention, but for them to make certain 

if possible that this report was true. Q , who was very ill at this 

time, left his bed to see P , and they all coincided that certain 

measures proposed by P would temporarily meet the exigency. 

P returned to Dublin with his instructions. K felt it was time 

to act. The Executive appeared to have abrogated their duties and to 

have left the whole strain of the crisis on Q , who, being ill, could do 

nothing. K left on a journey to try and find F and consult with 

him in this emergency. 

But F had left the town suffering under a relapse of his illness. 

Thinking over the grave condition of affairs during his long railway jour- 
ney, K evolved out of his thoughts what he concluded would be the 

only satisfactory thing to do : to send this woman and all the relatives out 
of the country, making a liberal provision for them when leaving. He 

reached headquarters and saw his sick friend, who agreed with K as 

to the departure of these people. The next day a dispatch came from 

P urging K 's return to Dublin, telling him his presence on the 

scene was absolutely necessary to give the men confidence. It was very 
evident from this message that matters were not satisfactory in that city. 

The question was, what did the enemy know ? Q feared that his 

friend might be seized by the foe, who possibly was preparing to make a 

swoop. Q suggested that K should visit Ireland by another 

route, and going as far as Dundalk communicate there with P . This 

advice was rejected by K ; if the enemy had any idea of a swoop 

Dublin was the place which demanded his presence, there his duty lay ; 

he decided on leaving for that city. He sent a message to P to have 

the two Invincible officers and N ready to meet him at a certain 

place on his arrival. The day of his departure he heard of F 's 

return to headquarters ; he immediately called on him. F looked 

upon the position as a very grave one. He said: " The enemy will paralyze 
your attack by a rapid series of arrests. I fear you are too late for any 
fighting, but your duty now is at the front with your men." And in part- 
ing he looked K earnestly in the face as he said, " Good-by, you are 

sure never to return ; this will be your last departure ; you have no other 
alternative but to go. Good-by, old fellow, we will not meet again." 

K had a similar farewell greeting from Q : there was a sad look 

in his eyes as he bade his friend a silent adieu. K 's friends did not 

give him much cheer, but he tried to look upon the affair in the best 
light ; he had grown accustomed to these dangerous journeys. 

Soon after his arrival he saw the three Invincible officers ; their gloomy 
idea of the state of things had passed away, they felt cheerful, and were 
satisfied the enemy was on the wrong trail. These men were perfectly 
satisfied to take their chances of almost certain death while making an 
assault upon their country's enemy, but being captured and imprisoned 
and going through the ordeal of one of his mock trials was a species of 

congealed horror they wished if possible to avoid. K decided in any 

case to send away the family on which suspicion had lingered. He intrusted 
this mission to the young lieutenant, as their consent was necessary 
before they could do anything in that direction. It was possible there 
was something in the air and that the enemy was only biding his time to 
strike. The organization through the wavering policy of their Govern- 
ment had done nothing since the Phoenix Park incident that would aid 
the advance of a spirited policy among the Irish people. The attack on 
Spencer must come off at once even without shells, as every day's delay 



578 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

played into the hands of the enemy. Better, as F expressed it, that 

the brave fellows should be shot in a fight than to rot in dungeons of the 

enemy, with all their attendant leprous evils. K determined to lose 

no time, but to at once see this most promiyent member of the Invinci- 
ble Government and make a last earnest effort to get what the men set 

such value by. K saw this eminent Irish statesman. They had a 

long and protracted interview, but the Invincible officer left fully satisfied 
he could be supplied with the required shells. 

He returned to Dublin determined to bring matters to an issue with 
the enemy, for he feared the capture of his brave comrades, the leaders 
of the "sacred band." He called to see the captain of one of the new 
bands of Invincibles, now grown strong in numbers. He asked that officer 
if he could with confidence promise the active service of himself and his 
command for daring and dangerous work in an emergency. He said 
that while there was no absolute need for alarm it was always possible 
for the enemy to make a raid and capture some of the men who had 
been actively engaged against him ; in this event officers of value might 
be imprisoned and communications so destroyed that the enemy by 
a raid of this kind would gain a victory in delaying any attack about 
to be made upon him. This Invincible captain replied, "I have every 
confidence in you because we know one another ; come to me with an 
order and I will guarantee to have the men ready at twenty-four hours' 
notice. As to the risks, we did not join this movement without calculating 
these, but I would prefer that myself and all my comrades were killed 
doing something worthy of Irishmen, like the Park affair, than to be 
miserably captured in a weak attempt. As to treason, I don't fear it ; there 
is not much of that, thank God, among us. If any of the brave fellows 
who performed that noble deed are taken by the cursed British enemy, we 
will revenge them or share their fate ; let us have but proper orders and 

intelligent advice." This in substance was K 's conversation with this 

patriotic Irishman. The miserable fiasco that followed the weakness, if 
not worse, displayed by the Invincible Directory so utterly disgusted him 
that the prestige gained by the Park incident was completely swept away. 
He has probably to-day joined that vast body of Irishmen who unfortu- 

ately grow despairing over repeated failures. K could give this man 

no information whatever as to the nature of the work he wished performed. 
For it was necessary to keep the proposed attack on Spencer absolutely 
secret. If the sacred band had the shells there need be no delay, but on 

with the work at once ; they might fail in defeating the foe, but K 

concluded that the suppression of the enemy's chief would surely succeed, 

and//w/.- that would be victory. A meeting was arranged by P , who 

was so completely free from suspicion by the enemy that his services 
were invaluable at this period. 

The brave captain and lieutenant of the sacred band met K by 

the agency of P , who was present on what was a memorable night. 

The captain of the Invincibles and K had a long conference to- 
gether. The officer expressed his confidence that all fear of a swoop by 

the enemy was over, and he imparted to K some of his own hopeful 

feeling. His companion, who stood with P some distance off, as 

this was an open air conference, had received the consent of the family 
he was commissioned to send away, and the captain was glad that they 
were leaving the country. He had also the gratifying news that he 
had procured from the south of Ireland a package of explosives that 

would be of value to them in future work. K told him he was 

hopeful of getting the shells within a week. He would leave Dublin 
the following night and return with these missiles, but if they could not 
be got they must try and make the best fight they were able with the 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 579 

weapons they had. It was a disgrace to Ireland, and more especially the 
Invincibles, to permit this tyrant to go on with his persecution and destruc- 
tion ; that his suppression was an imperative necessity to show the world 
that the true spirit which struck down tyranny last May still lived on. 
The captain was prepared to go to work at once, but preferred waiting to 
try and get the shells ; in the meantime he wanted to do something else 

with the new explosives he had now in his possession. K told him 

while what he suggested was good work, all minor matters must wait until 
after the supreme effort ; that is, if any of the band should survive to 

attack them once more. Though K said this with a smile he fully 

realized the bloody issue of the attack, but he felt it worth a thousand 
deaths to strike down this Red Earl at the head of his redcoats. It would 
ring out the death knell of British rule, and spur the manhood of Ireland 
to action against the remorseless invaders. 

The young lieutenant, the brave youth who struck down the chief of 
the British murder society, now came forward. He had on a thick over- 
coat and looked the picture of godlike manhood. There was a quiet and 

earnest smile in his eyes as he approached K , who grasped his brawny 

manly hand with true affection, for he felt that he was talking to a noble 

patriot who would shed his last drop of blood for Ireland. He told K 

the details of his mission as to sending away the family, and then broached 
other subjects. He was eager for the attack on Spencer, and hoped that 

K would succeed in getting them the shells, but in any event he 

advised the attack. There was plenty of men, he said, to destroy the British 
tyrant and his guard ; he had been out several times reconnoitering the Red 
Earl's route and ride to the castle, and felt satisfied that the attack would 

be a grand success. The time came to say good-by. K was to leave 

Dublin the following night, and return with or without the shells to deliver 
the assault upon the foe. That on that night there was no reason for any 
feeling but satisfaction that the enemy was baffled (which he was so far as to 

the possession of actual knowledge) K had every reason to think; still 

he could not shake off a sadness which came over him. P accom- 
panied K as they parted from the two Invincibles. TV was a last fare- 
well j they were destined never to meet again. .These noble-hearted patriots 
were captured by the enemy the following night, and have since died for 
Ireland on the scaffold — that implement of death in Ireland supposed to 
be a death of ignominy and disgrace, as another scaffold was in Jerusalem. 
In Ireland this brutal implement of execution has been sanctified. Around 
it is the aureole of martyrdom, for upon that tree man died for his fellow- 
man. They may bury the mortal casket in quicklime within the precincts 
of the prison, but they cannot inter the immortal doctrines for which their 
lives have been offered up — they cannot destroy their memories, which 
will remain for all time a holy light burning in the sacred fane of liberty 
and be forever inextinguishable. Death on the enemy's gibbet in Ireland 
has become for Irish patriots a death of honor. It has been robbed of its 
degradation by the sacrifice of heroes. It has become ennobled by the 
pure spirits of the patriot dead who gave up their lives for their people and 
their suffering motherland. The scaffold, which received the parting sighs 
of the pure-souled brothers Sheares, Robert Emmet, Joseph Brady, Daniel 
■Curley, and a legion of sainted patriots, has been watered and consecrated 
by the blood of the sanctified who died for their kindred and their homes. 

When K left his brave comrades that January evening, he did not, 

nor did the men, anticipate the rapid action of the enemy. They 
knew dangers surrounded them at all times, the air was thick with rumors 
and forebodings, but their familiarity with these gave them no special 
cause for anxiety. On the contrary this night they were satisfied that 
what they feared had passed away. K had shared with them many 



580 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. . 

dangers and many anxieties, they had many meetings and partings and 
the bonds of friendship were knit closer than comrades in less serious 
undertakings. As he walked away from them that night the Invincible 
leader recalled the parting on the eve of the 6th of May ; that evening they 
were gay and he was sad. None of them knew what the morrow would 
bring ; all were prepared and ready for any emergency which the sacred 
duty due their motherland demanded. The men expected that wounds 
and a red grave possibly awaited many, but they were cheerful even unto 

death. As K parted with them they were in a pleasant mood; he was 

in a grave one ; he thought of certain lines he had learned in boyhood 
and how applicable they were to the situation : 

" Brave comrades ! Well have you chosen to die ! For, in my mind, 
The grave is better than o'erburthened life ; — 
Better the quick release of glorious wounds, 
Than the eternal taunts of galling tongues ; — 
Better, in manhood's muscle and high blood, 
To leap the gulf, than totter to its edge 
In poverty, dull pain, and base decay. 

. A last farewell ! 
When next we meet, we'll have no time to look. 
How parting clouds a soldier's countenance ! 
Few as we are, we'll rouse them with a peal 
That shall shake Britain ! " 

The peal not only reverberated over Britain, but its echoes could be 
heard over Europe. But fate so ordained it that neither wounds nor death 
fell to the Irish soldiers' lot that 6th of May — their success was greater than 
the most sanguine could have hoped for. Some since have met a patriot's 
death, but they who died for the salvation of their country and country- 
men have had their memories foully slandered. How often have some 
of the living writhed 'neath the cruel damning slander from such a source, 
and felt the quick release of glorious wounds would be better than the 
eternal taunts of galling venomous tongues ! Those who to-day suffer in 
Britain's dungeons, subject to every degradation for life, are forgotten by 
the people for whom they suffer. 

The night that K was leaving Dublin, while he was yet on the 

waters several of his comrades were captured by the enemy ; of this he 
knew nothing. 

K saw Q next day and informed him of his visit to the Irish 

statesman, telling him that he was compelled to try and get the shells the 
men so frequently asked for. 

The news of the arrests came upon them both with surprise. Q 

appeared to treat this as one of the enemy's many blunders. But K 

felt in his heart that the foe had stolen a march upon him. He had no 
alternative but await results ; news from the statesman about the shells 
was of vital importance. The time passed in feverish anxiety to those who 
were interested in the new phase the struggle had assumed. Q fre- 
quently saw K , and with friendly words tried to make him feel hopeful. 

A week elapsed and the second examination came off, which showed 

the determination of the enemy for revenge. K wondered what the 

Invincible Executive was doing ; was G preparing a blow of retalia- 
tion ? Another week and a message came from the Executive ordering 

K to communicate with them through Q as heretofore. K 

felt outraged at the pusillanimity that dictated it, but said nothing. He 

silently acquiesced, as Q told him that some active work would be at 

once taken up. He said that G would see that all things were looked 

after, and that there was no reason for anxiety. 

Next day Q came with great anxiety and friendship in his face to 

say that the Executive requested K to leave for America. A promi- 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 581 

nent Parnellite near to the highest in that organization had learned that 

the enemy was on the lookout for K , and urged his instant departure. 

This looked very possible, but not probable, and, as it was learned a long 
time after, this gentleman was needlessly alarmed, but of course his inten- 
tions were very friendly. This gentleman, Z , is another of the Par- 
nellite members of Parliament at this date, 1887.* 

K had waited outwardly in a patient mood, expecting to hear from 

the Executive daily ; discipline kept him most obedient to the powers 
which he had recognized as his Government. But this continued timidity 
and perpetual cry of prudence, at a crisis when so many of his brave 
comrades were in the enemy's prisons, fretted his soul, and the request to 
leave was the last drop of water in his cup of pain. He could not in any 

way reproach Q , who was a brave and manly fellow, but those men 

behind him who held themselves so prominent before the Irish race and 
the whole civilized world. 

He told Q that he would not leave for America ; he did not believe 

there was any need ; that to desert his gallant friends at this crisis would be 
the blackest and foulest treason, and with a burst of indignation demanded 

an interview with G at once. He said to Q if he was in the enemy's 

power he knew his gallant friends would risk their lives again and again 
before they would desert him ; it would be the basest cowardice to leave 

them in this hour of agony. Q was deeply impressed with K 's 

state of mind, and told him he would convey to G the demand for an 

interview made by K . 

G complied to this request and arranged that they were to meet 

in a certain city some few hundred miles' journey from where they were 

then located. Q had to journey a similar distance. They were to 

meet in this town and hold a conference to decide on what action they 
should take to meet the enemy's raid, and to devise the most effective 

measures in this emergency. K thought out the position as best he 

could. He saw clearly the enemy meant to kill off a certain number of 
the men they had captured with or without truthful information, or, as- 
they termed it, evidence. The Invincible soldiers could not rescue their 
comrades. To do this meant a general insurrection, and the capture of 
Dublin from the enemy. But they could go on with the war, and so serve 
Ireland and avenge the brave patriots incarcerated. They could also see 
that the families of the imprisoned men were placed beyond reach of want, 
and that the prisoners held by the enemy should know that they were 
not deserted, and that everything that was possible in the exigencies of 
the hour should be done, regardless of what sacrifice of lives was necessary 

to strike down the foe. K decided on communicating to G the 

names and addresses of the two Invincible captains in Dublin, and to 
place before this member of the government his plans to meet the 

crisis. At this time K had a very high opinion of the unswerving 

determination and unflinching courage of this illustrious statesman. A 
certain message which he would give him would be the open sesame to 
these Dublin men's confidence, and the public reputation and well-known 
patriotism of this prominent Irishman would suffice to confirm it. These 
Invincible captains, armed with legal authority to act in their country's 

interest, would at once summon their bands to action. If G could 

procure the shells for the assault, it would be of great importance, but if 

* A division has now taken place in the Irish Parliamentary party. The name Par- 
nellite, which was formerly used to designate all the followers in and outside the enemy's 
Parliament, has not the same significance. Messrs. McCarthy, O'Brien, Dillon, Healy 
& Co. , were all then recognized as Parnellites. The gentleman who is spoken of here as 

Z , is still a Parnellite member of the London Parliament, remaining under the banner 

of Mr. Parnell (1891). 



582 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

not procured promptly they must attack with their present arms. P— — 
could muster a large number of the sacred band, for a number of the 
sub-officers were unknown to the foe, and these men would enter a 
blazing volcano to strike down the enemy, so incensed were they at 
his brutal, bloody rule. Whether this attack on Spencer would or 
would not bring on a revolution in Ireland or a rising in the capital — a 
spontaneous insurrection such as that of '98 was problematical. An organ- 
ized one K knew to be impossible ; it would be certain to result in 

the death of the red-handed tyrant, and would be Ireland's reply to the 
" Bloody Assize " charges made against Spencer by the leading Parnellite 
newspaper. 

In this open, manly course, and in bloodshed alone was Ireland's salva- 
tion ; the only hope of that stricken nation lay in acts of war, and in 
familiarizing her people with repeated attacks, constantly smiting the foe, 
for in the words of Holy Writ to redress her wrongs she must be told 
" that thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies and the tongue 
of thy dogs in the same." This crisis would test these statesmen's 

ability which F had so expatiated on in that famous interview with 

K . The latter indeed at that time held a very high opinion of the 

superior ability of the sterling patriot, G , and felt every confidence 

that he would insist that his colleagues should come to the front in this 
crisis, which was the time to test these men's souls. 

A train of fierce and bitter thoughts was K 's companion during 

that memorable railroad journey. He built high hopes on the coming 
interview. If this Irish statesman had the ability and courage which his 
friends considered he had, this was the crisis, the supreme moment, the 

ordeal placed before him by the enemy, to try his soul. G he knew 

could appoint a man of superior intelligence to succeed him (K ) in 

command at Dublin. He had the power to place a brave officer to take 
charge, whose first duty would be to strike the foe now in the hour of his 
apparent triumph. This would indeed be an Invincible vi«tory of some 
value. 

By orders Q was not to travel with K , but was to meet him at 

the end of the journey, in the town in which they were to go into council 

together as to the best plan to be adopted in the present crisis. When K 

reached his destination he called as directed at the house of a prominent 

Parnellite in that town. K had known of him by reputation as a 

stanch and patriotic Irishman. He learned there that the gentleman he 
looked for had been some short time previous at this house but had left; 

his return in a short time was expected. Q was also in town, but 

would return soon. K left his card to inform his friend that he had 

arrived. K made several calls but heard no news of the absent men; 

jhe walked that town weary and in company with his own sad thoughts. 

Evening came and with it Q , who invited K to walk out with him. 

And as they walked through the streets of the town Q told his friend 

that G had returned, but the enemy's spies were watching him so 

closely he did not consider it prudent to see K . Q then went 

on to tell him that G had positive information that the enemy was 

on the lookout for his (K 's) capture, and that he must leave at once 

for France or some other foreign country, as his presence under the 

British flag was dangerous. A tornado of indignation swept over K 's 

soul, and in his anguish of spirit he cursed the infernal prudence of these 
damned Provincialists, these puny dabblers at revolution, and in his rage 
would have wished a wind of perdition to have swept them away. This 
day's work was indeed the Invincibles' Waterloo! This hellish prudence, 
was it by this that the chiefs of the enemy's murder society was smitten 
to the earth in the Phoenix Park ? Oh, spirit of the illustrious dead ! See 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 583 

what milksops and cowards your descendants are, even among the 
most prominent leaders, the men who occupy the highest places! He 
groaned and gnashed his teeth when he realized his own impotence. If 

G 's story was true as to the extent of the enemy's information, it 

would be madness for him to go to Dublin, and yet he felt this madness 

must be. . How could he like a coward desert his brave friends? Q 

was walking by his side during the wild rage that swept over K 's 

mind. He knew by the expression of his face and his muttered exple- 
tives that he felt a storm of indignation at having come this long journey 
to be so grossly outraged with this cowardly plea of spies of the enemy. 

Q asked him what he proposed to do. " I will leave at once for 

Dublin," said K with bitterness, " and endeavor to repair this evil at 

no matter what consequences." " This would be a foolhardy mission," 

replied Q ; " you will not only be mad in attempting to go there, but 

you will give the enemy a cheap triumph by your capture and certain death. 

You will also violate instructions and disobey orders." K felt the full 

force of Q 's words, and he was in complete ignorance of what the 

enemy actually knew. Then his capture would not only be considered an 
important one by the foe, but would deprive him of doing anything in the 
crisis, and besides might be the medium of tracing up unknown men. 
He listened more calmly to Q , who continued: " G will go him- 
self to Dublin and will personally superintend all the important duties 

necessary in that city. He will at once see P ; you can put them in 

communication, and rely upon it everything that can be done under the 
circumstances he will do." 

This news of G taking an active part in the Invincible work 

reconciled K in a measure, but he could not put aside the sore disap- 
pointment he felt. K decided that in communicating with P he 

would make that brave and intelligent officer understand through their 
secret code that active work alone must be their only hope. Pettifogging 
lawyers and mock legal defense of the imprisoned men was wretched and 
driveling nonsense. One blow from a blade of cold steel was worth all 
the arguments the whole Bar could use, but Irishmen are astray on this 
question, — owing to their false teaching, — by taking part in these so-called 
legal mummeries, admitting London law and recognizing its existence in 
their country. But not so P . 

K could see plainly that there was no hope for the imprisoned 

men by any possible attempt at rescue, for this to be successful would 
mean the complete destruction of the enemy's power in that city. 

But the cause for which they were about to suffer could be kept alive 
if a fight could be brought on by attacking Spencer and his armed escort, 
and even if the streets of Dublin were drenched in blood, make the 
enemy feel the avenging strokes of the Invincibles. There would be 
hope for Ireland in this, and the brave Irish soldiers would be cheered to 
the grave by the ringing blows of their friends. 

K 's whole hope of success was now centred in G . He felt 

satisfied that if he went earnestly to work no better man could be selected 

to control the issue in this grave emergency. Q sent over to P 

the cased steel weapons he had, and the messenger who brought these put 

G and P in communication. G having arrived in that city 

he assumed control. 

P had but two interviews with G , who probably never dreamt 

of fight, and might possibly look on it as madness, for it appears he was 
also possessed of this Heaven-sent prudence. It must be said of this 

statesman and also of H that they were the most powerful men of the 

movement, but they were weighted down by former colleagues now turned 
to partial foes. The poison of Provincialism had destroyed them. Their 



584 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

dream of active opposition had passed away; it was to many but a 
temporary fever, but 'twas a fever that brought death and chains to those 
who were earnest and espoused the National cause from the loftiest of 
motives. But the victory gained on the 6th of May was worth all these 
deaths to Ireland; the lesson it has taught will sink deep into the young 
mind of growing Irishmen when the real facts are placed before them. 

G not meeting K , for which that memorable journey was 

undertaken, knew nothing of what K wished him to do, and cannot 

be held responsible for the failure, only so far as he was really answerable 

in not meeting K as prearranged. G displayed bravery and 

single-minded courage alone among his colleagues in going to Dublin at 
that moment of emergency. Looking at this from a Provincialist stand- 
point it might be called reckless and desperate daring. P , who 

knew of the proposed attack on Spencer, hesitated to mention the matter 

to G until he had grown more intimate with him ! He knew nothing 

whatever of K 's visit about the shells, and was not at that time 

acquainted with what knowledge G possessed on the matter, and 

from the superior position of the gentleman in the public movement he 
felt satisfied that the order for work of that nature should come from him. 

The business which was transacted between G and P was 

solely in the interest of the imprisoned men. G displayed great 

anxiety for his personal safety at this crisis and frequently assured P 

that he had every confidence in his fidelity and his honor. It is very 
possible that this statesman was more anxious about the Provincialist 
movement than the consequences to himself. This movement having 
assumed a false and dastardly position by the proclamation denouncing 

the 6th of May "suppression," the capture of G by the enemy 

might open up the most astounding facts and extraordinary compli- 
cations. His arrest might also reveal the actual value of the Parnellite 
proclamation and what it really was — the most infamous and traitor- 
ous document known to history. When P called to see G 

the third morning as arranged, he was told he was out of town for 

a few days. The fact was G was ordered away from Dublin by his 

colleagues, but as this was urgent, why did not another gentleman take 
his place, if not to fight the enemy (for prudence might step in here) 
at least to look after the brave fellows who were incarcerated by the foe 
in furtherance of the national policy once so heroically put forth by these 

then patriotic Irishmen. Where was that Irish Cid Y , the gentleman 

who in the inception of the movement so bravely volunteered to slay 
Forster; where was he at this juncture? History fails to record any 
action of his. There may be circumstances in his case that could easily 
explain this away, but nothing can explain away the absolute and com- 
plete neglect of these Irishmen entombed in the prison of the foe for 
the manly and heroic protest delivered in the Phoenix Park against the 
invaders who were making their country a huge charnel house. When 

G was ordered away no successor was sent; the crouching consciences 

of this fading Invincible Government were satisfied to leave their men to die 
neglected. P was left utterly and completely alone; his communica- 
tions were cut off. The Invincible Directory threw up the sponge, and 
the brave manhood imprisoned was left to feel they were deserted. O 
God, what base ingratitude! what infamous cowardice! What can a 
nation expect from the manhood of such statesmen? Many among them 
may plead sound and valid reasons why they could not help their im- 
prisoned men in their agony, speaking as Provincialists imbued with that 
prominent virtue called prudence. But even as Provincialists, even as 
men outside of Nationalist circles, was there no manhood in these men, 
no common bond of country that would prompt them from their well 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 585 

filled treasury to send an open subscription, if not a secret one, to show 
Ireland that national ingratitude had not gone so far as to leave these 
imprisoned men's families unprovided for after all the promises made them? 
To what baseness has this foul and criminal doctrine of association with 
these British felons and assassins of Ireland brought these once patriotic 
Irishmen! The intimate association with the murderers of the Irish 
people has reduced these men so low, to such a pitiable conditoin of 
leprosy, that the poorest beggar might pity them. 

Carey's treason left K one of two courses, either to leave for the 

United States or stay and give the enemy the opportunity of capturing him. 
This, after all the noise they made about his association with the Invinci- 
bles, they would have trumpeted as a victory. And there is no doubt that 
they would have given him the post of honor on the scaffold. Several of 
the Invincible statesmen they tried to capture ; the hideous monster that 
is preying on Ireland gnashed his teeth with rage, that his lust of blood 
could not be satisfied. The republics of France and the United States 
refused to admit that the "suppression " of the secretaries was criminal, 
and the British tyrant was reluctantly compelled to forego the object of 
his desires, to get those patriotic Irishmen in his blood-stained clutches. 
The treason of Carey, by which the enemy hoped to reap such a rich har- 
vest of blood, was barren in its results ; not one Irishman in addition was 
arrested, although the British bloodhounds were on the scent. The men 
already entombed in the invaders' dungeons were certain to die, even if 
this unfortunate man had not stained his soul with the crime of rebellion 
and treachery to his native land. 

The Provincialists were silent, and although they felt that public 
opinion was with the imprisoned patriots, yet none of them had the moral 
courage to express a single word of sympathy, or in any manner to espouse 
the cause of men whom they in their secret souls felt a strong affection 
for. It was the repetition of the scene after Gethsemane. They denied 
them thrice, and since with oaths and protestations they have publicly 
denied that they knew not the men ; the time has not yet come when, like 
Peter, they will repent and going into the garden weep bitterly. 

Peremptory orders were now sent to K to leave for the European 

Continent. The Directory said that it was all-important he should not 

remain within reach of the enemy. K obeyed his orders ; he began 

to feel more satisfied ; he thought that everything which wisdom and 

courage could do to face the emergency two such men as G and 

P would do for Ireland. He left P a channel through which he 

could communicate with him ; some letters were sent, but as K had 

left they were destroyed ; others of these reached him in the New World. 

The Invincible Government had permitted themselves to be almost 
effaced from the control of the movement and a senseless and stupid panic 
pervaded their ranks. One self-sacrificing noble fellow, by great personal 
-exertion, acting under the instructions of the highest authority, endeav- 
ored to get every suspected person and his surroundings out of the 
enemy's clutch. In so far as this can be called a victory the highest 
authority and his close personal friend found that their labors were 

crowned with success. K had some valuable weapons deposited in 

a leathern hand-bag, and when he left headquarters this satchel was 
taken by a lady and deposited for safe keeping with a Provincialist friend. 
But prudence, that wonderful gift, which attached itself so closely to 
these Heaven-sent leaders, came to the rescue, and what the lady saved 
from possible capture was thrown into the river of that town by the 
gentleman who was deputed by one in high authority to get the sus- 
pected people away. This gentleman is also at this date (1891) another of 
the Parnellite Members of Parliament. It must be written of this man 



586 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

* that for some unaccountable reason his services were not used earlier. The 
present writer would place him in the foreground of Ireland's earnest and 
patriotic sons, but the poison of Provincialism and hero worship has sapped 
his being. And a man who had the zeal and bravery of a Lord Edward 
is content to be allied with a group of men who were whining for some of 
the crumbs for Ireland that falls from her destroyers' legislative table. 

P tried to raise a public subscription to help the families of the 

imprisoned men and so enable these crouching cowards to come to the 
front with at least some of their wealth, which they could send secretly. 
He got a subscription from a friend and sent it to one of the Provincial 
organs. This paper relegated the notice to an obscure corner of one of 
its columns, and in small type, as if fearful to display the smallest sym- 
pathy, even the most remote, to the heroic men who were about to die 
for Ireland, while a number of crawling cowards whose souls were so 
sunken as not only to neglect their colleagues, but to refuse them even 
secret help, bore emblazoned before the world the name of patriots, and 
were receiving at that very time large sums collected from the hard work- 
ing Irish-American toilers, who through mistaken generosity were continu- 
ing to supply these unhappy fallen Provincialists with well filled purses. 

P 's attempt to raise a public subscription failed. The Provin- 
cialists by their actions were assisting the enemy in trying to poison the 
minds of the citizens against the prisoners and their principles. The Irish 
Nationalists scattered over the island believed that the public subscription 
was a ruse, and that the men were well looked after. They could not 
believe such desertion possible. The scene of mourning in Dublin that 
memorable Whit-Monday, 1883, and the crowds outside Kilmainham, con- 
vinced the Provincial leaders that the pulsation of the nation's heart beat 
in unison with her heroic defenders. The Provincialists did not upbraid 
or reproach at that time; they at least preserved the dignity of silence. 
Men who despaired of Ireland under their public teaching hoped against 
hope that they would retrace their steps and advocate action. 

On K 's arrival in America he learnt the complete disaster of 

the cause in Dublin. The hope was implanted in his breast that 

G , aided by P , would bring the other Invincible bands upon the 

scene, and make Ireland reverberate with their blows, to show mankind 
that the arrests of the patriots was answered by their comrades in a grand 
attack on Spencer and his guard, which would end in that tyrant's death. 
But all, alas! was fright, desertion, and disgrace. How he tried to remedy 
this and blot out of life the ensanguined foe, who had imbrued his hands 
in the blood of his comrades even at the almost certain sacrifice of his 
own ; how he was strangled by the damned system of red tape and jeal- 
ousy that is choking, if it has not choked, Irish movements; how he 
vainly tried, forms no part of this history. The masters of cant hold 
the fort and are to-day leading the Irish people to their certain destruction. 

But Ireland is awakening from her stupor already; there are signs of 
life upon the horizon. She will then begin to realize how noble and 
faithful unto death were her pure-souled Invincible soldiers, who sacri- 
ficed all that she might be free of her tyrants. 

Brave sons of a once gallant race! Daniel Curley, with the cool- 
headedness that reveals strength, with the determination of a Paladin, 
when Forster resigned his post as chief British assassin in Ireland, how you 
felt enraged that he escaped the punishment due his great crimes! How 
nobly you volunteered to follow him to his lair and give up your life to 
strike the tyrant down, but yielded to authority when told that Forster 
was politically dead as a foe; that Ireland might hear his waspish tongue 
but never more wear his galling chains. That another chief of the 
murder bureau would invade our sacred soil, and Ireland would again be 
in her legitimate position of self-defense. The hour to strike was near! 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 587 

Joseph Brady, with the heroism and daring of a Leonidas, filled with 
Spartan courage and self sacrifice, your simple, manly character has left 
its writing in indelible characters upon the page of your country's history! 

Timothy Kelly, young and enthusiastic, who smiled at grave words, 
but performed daring acts, filled with ardor and daring, a boy in years, 
a veteran in courage! 

Michael Fagan, indefatigable, faithful, and unswerving to death in the 
nation's glorious cause! 

Turning from these patriots who sanctified the scaffold, and piercing 
into the gloom of the enemy's dungeon, there toils on in torture the 
aged Fitzharris, humble, humorous, with the natural wit of a brilliant 
race, but heroic! A Titan in the strength of his resolution, steadfast and 
practical in his loyalty to his land! 

And you, O Joseph Mullet! who braved with manly fortitude the 
criminals' minion whom they termed a judge, in the invaders' court you 
boldly from the dock enunciated your love of mother land and hurled 
defiance in the assassin's face! 

In that dungeon's gloom there are others, suffering sons of the Green 
Isle, that may survive the torture. To be praised by this pen would very 
probably inflict upon them the further torture of exile. 

They were Paladins all ! exhausted in strength but not in heart ! Other 
men and other times may do them justice, but that these unborn freemen 
may read the truth, one of the living — himself an exile — pens these lines. 

Those who believe this Irish national question can be settled peace- 
fully — which is an utter impossibility — will point to these losses as a lesson 
against Revolutionary movements. Men who strike the foe must expect 
to be struck back again; no sensible man of the party of action complains 
of this. The enemy is committing more havoc against the Irish race, as 
has already been pointed out, during these so-called peaceful movements, 
than he could accomplish in twice the period by the bloodiest revolution 
were his cannon pouring grape and cannister. There exists no such 
record of destruction in the bloodiest wars or most horrible revolutions 
that ever cursed mankind. Nothing can be found in history like the 
steady, unceasing destruction of fifty thousand souls yearly. The few 
patriots of the party of action killed by the enemy, and including those 
imprisoned and ruined, — the last not the least feature in the struggle, — 
are infinitesimal beside this huge peaceful (?) destruction. If Ireland 
intends to put into practice the lessons learned by recent results she must 
remember that it is not enough to reform abuses; habits must be 
changed. She must not rest satisfied in changing the order of things 
physically, but she must do so entirely in the ideal. Do not let her say 
with the French Revolutionist, The windmill is gone, but the wind is there 
yet. Those who follow the immoral cause of Parliamentary agitation are 
worse enemies to Ireland than even the rebel Orangemen; the one Ireland 
is prepared for as a foe, the other in false disguise goes into the sanctity of 
the national chamber only to corrupt it. Let Irishmen remember there are 
three things which cannot be compromised without bringing a lasting 
stain : A man with his honor, a woman with her virtue, or a nation with 
its independence ; if Irishmen will remember this, th^y will not commit the 
fearful fault of recognizing the foreign invader's government but as the 
slave recognizes his chains. Ireland has no need of politics; they are her 
curse. Let us not be misunderstood ; we do not confound what are called 
"political opinions" with the grand aspirations after liberty. With that 
sublime and democratic national faith, the complete independence of Ire- 
land, rests the very foundation of our patriotic efforts. But this is not 
to be found in that den of iniquity for Ireland — her destroyer's legislative 
halls, where Ireland's delegates go only to be branded as renegades to 
the pure national faith. 



588 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The time will come soon when Ireland must call into existence the 
Invincibles or some kindred movement, or else be decimated as a people 
at home. Irish national feeling should invite respect and deep reflec- 
tion. The Invincible organization has passed away, but Irish hatred of 
Britain and British rule does not spring up and die out with one move- 
ment, neither does it die in one generation. It has survived disasters 
and defeat, but with the continuance of the gigantic emigration the hour 
is near for either victory or death. 

In the early part of this year (1887) the organ of the "British murder 
society" — the London Times — published a series of articles which, in the 
language of this expounder of assassination literature, was termed, "Par- 
nellism and Crime." The special object of these articles was to prove 
that Mr. Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary party — or a great number 
of them — were identified with the Invincible organization. The enemy's 
organ wished the world to believe that Mr. Parnell and his following were 
practical Irish patriots who were hostile to death against foreign rule in 
their native land. This accusation of being animated with the self-same 
devotion to Ireland as filled the patriotic souls of Tone, Fitzgerald, and 
Emmet, Mr. Parnell and his followers indignantly denied; they wished 
the Irish people to understand that they are loyal West-British subjects of 
the British throne, who are trying to reform certain abuses in the Western 
part of the kingdom, and that to call them Irish Nationalists or in sym- 
pathy with such criminals is an outrage on their good name. 

It has been so far a wordy duel of charge and counter-charge, with the 
use of very extravagant and brutal language toward Irish patriots in the 
British murder society's organ. This language we take from this journal 
and apply it where it properly belongs. In describing the invaders of 
Ireland in this history it is in many instances done in their own expressions. 

What most seriously concerns Irishmen who reflect on the nature of 
the Times warfare (and more especially men who are prepared to make 
sacrifices for the purpose of liberating their nation from the foreigner's 
chains) is this continued moral support given to the enemy — the strong 
public political alliance tendered to Ireland's foe by men who were not 
supposed at one time to be actuated by any such feeling. Every speaker 
on the supposed Irish side in the enemy's house repelled with seeming 
horror the bare suspicion of being even associated with those of their 
countrymen who proved practical Nationalists by suppressing the British 
assassins that invaded Ireland. They gave every moral comfort they 
could to the enemy by using stronger language than he or his murder 
organ could use in slandering and outraging the memory of the noble 
patriots who died on the scaffold for their enslaved nation, and by 
denouncing the Irishmen now suffering in the enemy's dungeons. What 
treason and infamy! From every side of that chamber where laws are 
made to more firmly rivet the shackles which bind the limbs of Ireland, 
was heard the voice of foul abuse and calumny leveled against the daring 
Irish soldiers who by deeds would set the captive free. But no British 
voice equaled the contumely and infamy sought to be hurled against the 
honor and manhood of Irish patriotism, than those efforts made by the 
Irish party in that House to repel the charge that they were leagued 
with these Irish patriots. The deep and damning disgrace of this 
exhibition was that many of these Irishmen did not, could not believe the 
foul slander they were uttering. 

Mr. Sexton, the silver-tongued orator of a nation of orators, is wor- 
shiped by Irishmen in proportion to the beauty and elegance of his 
diction, but while good speaking is pleasing to the ear and charming to 
the senses, it has no more influence to free nations without deeds, than 
the entrancing singing of Guiglini or Mario could have freed Italy, 
without the action of her brave sons and the weapons they so valorously 



INNER HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION. 589 

wielded. But these very deeds this silver-tongued orator was condemn- 
ing in no stinted manner in the legislative halls of his country's assas- 
sins. In one of these debates which took place upon these Times' articles, 
called " Parnellism and Crime," every Irish speaker in that chamber tried 
to outdo his predecessor in condemnation of the Irish Invincibles. Mr. 
Sexton said: "Does anyone need to go beyond the title of the article 
— 'Parnellism and Crime'? The article asserts there is an association 
between a body of members of this House and breakers of the criminal law 
of the country. The very title constitutes a breach of privilege." 

Very fitly and in proper terms did Mr. Sexton describe himself and 
those men, his colleagues, who were once Irish patriots — or posed as such 
before their people — when he called them "a body of members of this 
House." They were more British than the British in insulting the dead and 
imprisoned Irish Nationalists in that chamber. The criminal laws of 
those British assassins of Irish liberty carry neither obedience nor respect 
to Irishmen, but the very reverse. It was by breaking British criminal 
law and every British law that the Americans and the Boers threw off 
British supremacy in their countries. The duty of Irishmen to their 
bleeding nation demands the suppression of every invader who comes to 
Ireland from British "murder councils," to set his bloody work afoot in 
that prostrate and enslaved country. To do this, Irishmen must in effect 
tear up and trample 'neath their feet the criminal law and all the edicts 
of the enemy, which have no legal authority in Ireland but the force 
which the thug uses in strangling his victims. It is in alliance with the 
British in the moral assassination of their nation that these Irishmen are 
found in this remarkable debate. 

But when the Irish leader arose in that House — that House from 
which with howls of execration himself and his followers were hurled forth 
a few years before; that House which hailed with cheers the arrest of 
his friends and enacted penal laws again and again to further bind and 
lash his country; that House which gave power to the British Minister to 
use what tyrannies he liked in prostrate Ireland, and by whose sanction 
he, the leader, and his most daring followers were wantonly thrown into 
prison, when the British cheered with joy Gladstone's announcement of 
his arrest, Irish hearts thrilled with indignation and Irish arms felt the 
hour had come to strike — when he, Charles Stewart Parnell, arose to take 
part in this hideous debate, and when the burning, blistering, slanderous 
words came hissing from his lips in the Senate of his country's foe, when 
he, standing in the presence of Ireland's enemies, stigmatized the men who 
died for Ireland as assassins, then an agonized thrill of horror went 
pulsing through the Nation's frame as she stood bleeding beneath the 
blows dealt her by her moral assassins in that chamber; but when she saw 
the uplifted steel of Charles Stewart Parnell, Ireland covered her face with 
her robe, and falling prostrate at the base of Liberty's statue, cried out 
with the dying Caesar, "£t tu, Brute T 

The enemy's vituperation and misrepresentation of the Invincibles is 
only natural, and what Irishmen should expect from such an unscrupu- 
lous and brutal foe, but this policy of public dishonesty and suppression 
of their real sentiments, this lack of moral courage taught the Irish 
people by the Provincialists is degrading them before mankind. The 
great masses obey because educated men in whom they have confidence 
teach them it is good policy and most perfect diplomacy to publicly 
lie, and to denounce the most cherished aspirations of their inmost souls. 
How often unthinkingly and from custom, not weighing the value of their 
words, are Irishmen heard to exclaim in the language of the enemy 
"Rebel Cork," or "Rebel Wexford," and the " 'Murders in the Phceryx 
Park." As Mirabeau has said, "words are things." 

Treason and murder are foul crimes — almost the foulest man can 



59° THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

commit. But the men of Cork or of Wexford or any part of Ireland who 
are meant by these heedless expressions are not stained with the sin of 
rebellion, but are heroic, noble, and loyal Irishmen, faithful and true to the 
land that gave them birth, owing no allegiance to her cruel destroyer, 
as Ireland has never been wholly conquered. The only debt due to the 
foe is that of the most extreme and determined hostility — hostility even 
unto death. Neither was the "suppressing" of these blood-stained foreign 
officials in broad daylight in the open public park of Ireland's metropolis 
"a crime or murder" ; it was an act of war forced upon the Irish by her 
foreign assassins. 

Two great and powerful governments, those of France and the United 
States, held that this act was not crime; but an "act of war." It has 
been truthfully said that there are men who frantically appeal to heaven 
and earth against the killing of two of Britain's chief officers employed in 
the assassination of the Irish race, and none of these will express a single 
word of indignation against the murder of a tuhole people. 

The agitation to settle this grievance is not only grievous nonsense,, 
but it is fast becoming a greater injury to Irish national life than even 
Orangeism, for it is insidiously straining every nerve to bring the Irish 
people into the camp of their wily foe, William Ewart Gladstone. It is 
trying to keep them in a state of torpor while the British foe continues to 
decimate the race, which the enemy is doing with all speed. The emigra- 
tion this year (1887) has been frightful. 

The agitation cannot point to one single practical gain after all their 
meetings and childish resolutions. Cannot Irishmen learn a lesson from 
their foes? During the Italian struggle for independence, when, unlike 
Ireland with her enemy, Italians were striving to drive away and destroy 
the Austrian invader, the London Times, in one of its many editorials at 
that time on this subject, said: "It is quite time that the struggling 
nationalities should understand that free men have no sympathy with men 
who do nothing but howl and shriek in their fetters. Liberty is a serious 
game, to be played out, as the Greek told the Persian, with knives and 
hatchets, and not with drawled epigrams and soft petitions!" The In- 
vincibles believed with the Greek that Irish freedom could only be won 
by knives and hatchets; those who love to howl and shriek in their fetters 
have denounced them as destroyers of their country and criminals. Let 
liberty-loving mankind decide between them ; Irish patriots have no fear 
of the verdict or the judgment of posterity. 

While a single British regiment remains west of St. George's Channel or 
the Irish Sea, not only Irish independence or self-government, but the 
most moderate form of Home Rule is impossible. Howling and shriek- 
ing will not win anything. Full and complete independence can be pro- 
cured by the same means which could bring to Ireland that moderate 
Home Rule now asked for and falsely and hypocritically promised by a 
pledge-breaking Liberal chief of one of the enemy's factions, but which 
will not be given by the invaders' government of either factions. They 
will never surrender to either public meetings, "drawling epigrams, or soft 
petitions." Hatchets and knives, or what they are the symbols of, must 
fight out the issue to a victorious conclusion or else national death. 

Liberty! Magical word, which has begotten so much misfortune, 
prosperity, virtue, and crime! Sacred word, which fills with enthusiasm 
generous souls, which will always be the idol of whoever values honor and 
dignity. In the sacred name of Liberty, countrymen, stand erect in your 
manhood and cease to howl with rage or shriek with impotence! Close up 
your ranks and unite in action. One determined effort all along the line 
and we will witness the glorious sight of a living Ireland springing from 
the tomb. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

(1885-86.) 

GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. GLADSTONE'S 
FOREIGN RULE BILL. 

Irish Victories — County Conventions — Nominations of Members — European Statesmen 
and Ireland — Parnell's Speech in Mayo, November 5, 1885 — Opposition to Philip Callan 
in Louth — Solemn Promises of Parnell — Home Rule Certain before Two Years — Home 
Rule Manifesto — Gladstone and the Liberals Denounced — Parnell's Great Liverpool 
Speech — Bitter Denunciations of Gladstone — Parnell Accuses Gladstone of Wanting to 
Cheat Ireland out of Home Rule — Parnell will only Accept the Fullest and Completest 
Control — Result of General Election, 1885 — Return of Eighty-six Home Rulers — Glad- 
stone's Victory in England — Eighty-three Majority in Defiance of the Irish Votes — 
Parnell in Power — No Government can Stand without his Help — Parnellites could 
Never Have a more Favorable Position — The Tory Government Announce Coercion — 
Defeat of the Tories on an English Question — The Grand Old Man once more in 
Power — Mr. Gladstone's Review of the Situation — Leeds Mercury on Gladstone's 
Possible Home Rule Bill — No Interference with British Manufactures— Another Irish 
Famine — Secessions from the Liberal Cabinet — April 8, 1886 — Scenes Inside the 
House of Commons — Gladstone's Home Rule — Great Speech of the Premier — A 
Responsible Irish Ministry Promised — Trevelyan's Opposition — Parnell's Speech — 
Churchill's Speech — The First Order — Parnell's Cable to America — Bill Satisfactory — 
Irish Enthusiasm — Public Meeting Thanks Gladstone — Great Irish Demonstrations in 
Support of the Measure — Letter from an Austrian on the Vienna Parliament — Opinions 
of the Press on the Bill — Gladstone's Definition of Local Patriotism — Irish Nationality 
— Pure and Unselfish Love of Country — Great Mass Meeting in Boston — Mayor 
O'Brien Cables Resolution to Gladstone — English Premier's Reply — April 16, 18S6, 
First appearance of Gladstone's Home Rule Bill — The Bill in extenso — A Crippled 
Legislature — Shorn of All Law-ma' ing Powers — Mere Passage of Local Bye-Laws — 
Gladstone's Public Lie — Irish Government a Despotism — No Irish Responsible 
Ministers — Autocratic Castle Government — Facsimile of Indian Government — Free 
from the Control of all Parliaments — Irish Parliament with no Power to Make Laws 
for Trade, Manufactures, or the Land — Britain Holds the Public Purse — Gladstone's 
Bill — Concentration of Foreign Rule — Irish Revenue — Power of the Lord Lieutenant 
to Pass Coercion without Parliament — One Man Power — An Additional Tax on the 
Irish People — Powerlessness of the Parnellites if the Bill Passed — Summary of Glad- 
stone's Foreign Rule Bill — Not an Irish Chamber — The Coercion Laws — Dublin 
Parliament and Men of '98 — Debate on the Second Reading — Goschen's Speech — 
Parnell Indorses the Bill — Rejection of the Bill — Gladstone's New Coercion Bill — 
Passed into Law — Irish Evictions under Gladstone's Rule — Total for Gladstone's 
Short Term 10,248 — Election of 1886 — British Workingmen Vote against Home Rule 
— Great Majority for Anti-Home Rulers — English Boroughs — Hostilities of Horny- 
handed Sons of Labor — Washington Rejects Home Rule — " Nothing Short of Inde- 
pendence can Possibly do." 

The Parliament, which had been elected with such hope for Ireland 
in the spring of 1880, was dissolved. The promise of great things, for 
which the Provincialist organs greeted the Premiership of Mr. Gladstone 
and the Chief Secretaryship of Mr. Forster, had failed. The same jour- 
nals which hailed Mr. Forster's advent with good omen sent a howl of 
execration on his departing footsteps ; his coming and his departure were 
both Irish victories, and Mr. Gladstone's defeat was another Irish victory. 
It will be remembered how hopefully Mr. Parnell wrote of the general 
election of 1880 in his letter to the Chicago Daily News. He stated : 
■" It is incorrect to suppose that Liberals are rendered independent of the 
Irish Members . . . should the Liberals refuse to concede to our just 
demands they can be very promptly reduced to order . . . The Irish 

59i 



592 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

party know what they want, and are determined to have it rendered impossi- 
ble that the most powerful Ministry can withstand t/ie/n." 

The Tower of Babel was nothing near the height these men have 
built up a tower of delusion to mock the Irish race with. When the 
sitting was peremptorily closed, and when the thirty-five members were 
ignominiously expelled the House, where was the power to reduce the 
Ministry to prompt obedience ? When Gladstone reached the Coercion 
Act, why did they not make it practically impossible for him to do so ? 

Will Irishmen ever learn the lesson that this agitation should have 
long since taught them, that they might as well attack the strong Fort- 
ress of Metz with bonbons as to dream of the folly of shaming England 
or talking her into giving them over the management of their own 
affairs. 

The Tory Government was hailed with delight as the benefactor which 
allowed coercion to disappear. The Irish, in acknowledging it, were 
a little more moderate in their expressions of joy, and acted with more 
commendable prudence than they did a little later on. County conven- 
tions were held to appoint candidates for Parliament. In nearly every 
case Mr. Parnell dictated the nomination. There can be no fault found 
with this. If Parliamentary tactics had anything in them, Mr. Parnell was 
most likely to know the men he wanted. This history does not purpose 
going into any detailed statement of this comparatively recent election. 
It was remarkable in one respect only : that since the legislative union 
with Britain it was the first time that Ireland had a franchise whereby 
she could publicly place on record her detestation of foreign rule. 
The world — that is that portion of European and American civilization 
which takes any passing interest in those things — knows well the actual 
state of Irish feeling. What meant the insurrections of 1798, 1803 ? The 
'48, '65 and '67 movements — had they not some part in educating the 
public mind as to Ireland's real sentiments ? This general election merely 
indorsed what everyone knew : that the overwhelming majority of 
Irishmen claim the right to govern . reland, the right to make their own 
laws in Ireland, by Irishmen for Irishmen. The statesmen of Europe, 
men who move large armies and who have made a study of international 
questions ; such men as Bismarck, Giers, Kalnoky, Schouvaloff, Ignatieff, 
and scores of others know the real issue between Ireland and Britain. 
They are keen watchers of every incident on the European chessboard. 
When such small places as Greece, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, or 
Bulgaria come within the sphere of their operations, how much more 
important Ireland, that is larger than any three of these united ! If 
Irishmen would cease their mock " Constitutional " programme, material 
help might come to them in the clash of European nationalities ; but they 
must show the nations they mean to help themselves by deeds and 
sacrifices, not by talk and bombast. 

This general election, claimed as a victory by the Irish Provincialists, 
was quite in keeping with this oft-repeated childish cry ; it was simply the 
expression of national will for self-government. These eighty-five repre- 
sentatives were to be either the recipients of the national demand, or else 
of national humiliation. The election of these Irish delegates was termed 
victory. Nay, that of each particular one was supposed to be occasion for 
national delight. 

During this election, the Irish Parliamentary party were as bitter 
against Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals as to-day they are their much 
obliged and faithful servants. Mr. Parnell, speaking in Mayo, November 
3, 1885, said: "Speaking for myself, and I believe for the people of 
Ireland and all my colleagues, I have to declare we will never accept any- 
thing but the full and complete right to arrange our own affairs and to 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 593 

make our land a nation, and to secure for Ireland, free from outside control, 
the right to direct her own course among the peoples of the earth." 

These words are the true doctrines of Irish nationality, but they can 
only be accomplished in spite of the enemy, never with his voluntary con- 
sent. The speaker, true to his irresolute character, directly contradicted 
this speech by his subsequent conduct in Parliament. Mr. Parnell very 
properly opposed Mr. Callan in Louth. This election was an exciting one 
owing to the Callan faction offering great opposition. It was during this 
election that Mr. Parnell, November 3, 1885, made his famous public 
promise. His words were : " Men of Ireland, so sure as the sun shines in 
the heavens to-morrow morning, so certainly shall Ireland have Home Rule 
before two years." 

It is past two years since these memorable words were spoken, and 
Ireland is to-day in bondage, her deputies insulted and dragged off to 
prison, and the certain Home Rule as far off as when O'Connell promised 
it over forty years ago ; and it will forever be a myth until Irishmen are 
determined to attack the foe who withhold it. 

The new redistribution of seats enabled the Home Rulers to success- 
fully contest one of the Liverpool Parliamentary divisions. Mr. T. P. 
O'Connor, an admirable strategist and a firm believer in Parliamentary 
warfare, is a thorough West Briton, but that he is an honest Provincialist 
who believes Ireland's destiny is to be perpetually wound up in the British 
Empire and British interests, there is no doubt. It is the fault of the people 
who call such anti-Irishmen patriots. Mr. O'Connor is a humorous, able 
speaker and a most accomplished writer. He was selected as the proper 
man to stand in the Home Rule interest for Liverpool. The following 
manifesto was issued by the Parliamentary party. " The Liberal party 
are making an appeal to the confidence of the electors at the general 
election of 1885, as at the general election of 1880, on false pretenses. In 
1880 the Liberal party promised peace, and it afterward made unjust war. 

" To Ireland, more than any other country, it bound itself by most 
solemn pledges, and these it most flagrantly violated. It denounced 
coercion and. it practiced a system of corecion more brutal than that of any 
previous Administration, Liberal or Tory. Under this system juries were 
packed with a shamelessness unprecedented even in Liberal Administra- 
tions, and innocent men zvere hanged or sent to the living death of penal 
servitude ; twelve hundred men were imprisoned without trial ; ladies 
were convicted under an obsolete Act directed against the degraded of 
their sex, and for a period every utterance of the popular press and of the 
popular meeting was as completely suppressed as if Ireland was Poland and 
the Administration of England a Russian autocracy. The representatives 
of Liberalism in Ireland were men like Mr. Forster and Lord Spencer, who 
have left more hateful memories in Ireland than any statesmen of the 
century. The last declaration of Mr. Gladstone was that he intended 
to renew the very worst clauses of the Coercion Act of 1882." 

The Irish Home Rule party then spoke truth, but they are speaking 
the very reverse to-day. The statesman whom they denounced for his 
intention to renew the very worst clauses of the Coercion Act, they hailed 
a few months after as their deliverer. They made this Englishman their 
leader, which position he still occupies. Speaking of Gladstone's Adminis- 
tration in Ireland as an autocracy, every British Government is and has been 
the same. The present Tory Government is practicing acts of despotism ; 
and if the Liberals under Mr. Gladstone were returned they would, of 
course, continue the same despotism. Dividing British rule into parties 
is Ireland's unfortunate weakness, no such thing exists. Foreign rule is 



594 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

foreign rule under Gladstone, Salisbury, or any other Briton. Mr. 
Parnell, addressing the Liverpool electors at this time, also makes a vio- 
lent but yet just attack upon Gladstone's Irish government. The mon- 
strous inconsistency of this man and his followers, in praising the same 
Gladstone to-day, is humiliating to Irishmen. What aggravates the situa- 
tion is the degrading manner in which he has led so many of the Irish race 
to follow in his footsteps. Mr. Parnell, in addressing the Irish electors of 
Liverpool Exchange Division in the Concert Hall, and afterward in the 
open air in front of St. George's Hall, said : " That manifesto recom- 
mends the Irish electors everywhere to vote for the Conservative candidate 
against either the Liberals or the Radicals [loud cheers]. I fully and cor- 
dially approve of every word of that recommendation, and recognize in 
your faithful adherence to the terms of that recommendation the only safety 
for Ireland and her people. We considered the matter long and carefully, 
and it was absolutely impossible for us, in the face of facts and of past occur- 
rences and future probabilities, to give you any other recommendation. 

" Let me remind you of the reasons which weighed upon us in coming 
to this decision. We had on the one hand the fact that Ireland during the 
last five years has been scourged in an unexampled fashion by the leaders of 
the Liberal party [Hear, hear, and a voice " Bad luck to them"]. For some 
two years under the first Coercion Act no man's liberty in Ireland was 
safe. I and a thousand other respectable men in Ireland were imprisoned 
without trial [" Shame"] and while we were there, when our mouths were 
shut and we were unable to defend ourselves, our characters were taken 
away in Parliament by the leaders of the Liberal party [hooting] but they 
did not stop at the imprisonment of men. They even ventured upon 
imprisoning ladies ["Shame"]. At onetime a hundred cells had been 
prepared in a prison in Dublin for the reception of the ladies of Ireland, 
who were carrying on the work — the national work — of the Land League 
during the imprisonment of the men. 

" Immediately before the expiration of this act they pressed Parlia- 
ment for further powers. 

" They got the Crimes Act. . . Many persons were arrested, received 
the mockery of a trial and were condemned to death. Many other inno- 
cent persons [a voice, " Miles Joyce"] were condemned to penal servitude, 
and are still suffering that [" Shame " and a voice, " We will have them 
out"],* and when the present Government agreed to an inquiry into the 
misdeeds of their predecessors what was the action of the Liberal party ? 
They rose up and attempted to intimidate Lord Carnarvon from carrying 
out his duty as a Christian and as a ruler of the country. They attempted 
to double-lock the doors upon these innocent persons, and at the very 
moment we succeeded in hurling the late Government from power [loud and 
prolonged cheering] by what I can only regard as a dispensation of Provi- 
dence or fortune so happy for Irelatid in its results f — at that very moment, 

* During Mr. Gladstone's six months of power, when these Parnellites were in league 
with him, as they are to this date, and when he posed before the world as a Home Rule 
chieftain, these men, who were imprisoned on false and perjured testimony, were retained 
in penal dungeons, not one man released, although Mr. Gladstone by his signature could 
have liberated them all. And there is no record that the Parnellites ever demanded the 
freedom of these suffering captives. 

\ Mr. Parnell terms the overthrow of Mr. Gladstone a dispensation of Providence, and 
at this date he would hail his restoration to power as another and similar dispensation. How 
Irishmen can be led by these political charlatans is past human comprehension. Of course 
the Irish-West-Britisher would say that Mr. Gladstone has changed. We challenge these 
men to point to one single action, during his short-lived term of power, to corroborate this 
reckless and untrue statement. We ignore the hypocritical cant of this Englishman's 
words, which has always misrepresented his conduct. 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 595 

fellow-countrymen, they were planning among themselves how they could 
best renew the worst features of the Coercion Act — the jury-packing clauses 
and the intimidation clauses. 

" It is no longer a question of whether we can get Home Rule or the 
right of ruling ourselves; the question is, how much of it they will be able 
to cheat us out of. [A voice, " They won't cheat you out of much, that's 
one consolation."] [Laughter.] Mr. Gladstone [hooting and hisses] has 
plainly intimated that if he succeeds in getting into power with a dig majority, 
he will try and cheat us out of a good deal of it, but nothing in the world 
would induce me to accept on behalf of the Irish people anything but the 
fullest and co7npletest control over our own affairs [loud cheers]. I believe 
that a halting and inefficient measure would be fatal to the interests of both 
England and Ireland. It would leave room for further agitation. Eng- 
land would be continually embroiled in our own disputes over there." 

How often have Mr. Parnell and all such men, men devoid of courage 
or resolution, been condemned out of their own mouth ? 

The result of the general election of 1885 was : Liberals 333, Tories 
250, Irish 86, Independent 1. 

This showed a Liberal majority of 83, not counting the Irish votes, 
and this Liberal majority was gained in spite of the direct opposition of the 
Irish vote, although this vote went as the Parnellites directed. What silly 
statements Irish leaders make in trying to convince their countrymen that 
the vote in England is an important factor in deciding elections ; a vote 
that must be necessarily small numerically, and no matter how organized 
— and it is believed that its organization was, humanly speaking, as perfect 
as it could be during this election — it can only turn the scale when British 
parties are fairly equal. The Irish in Britain are some of the best of 
their race, brave, resolute, and determined, but useless, like the men at 
home at present. This agitation has them in the torpid sleep of desue- 
tude. A brainy leader would find these men invaluable, but ?wt for 
voting. 

The positions of parties were most favorable for Mr. Parnell. The 
leaders of legal agitation never before dreamed of such a position — eighty- 
six votes of a solid united party, every man pledged to vote with the 
majority ! What ecstasies of joy would Mr. Butt have felt if he had had 
such a determined and united following ? what great things would he not 
do? Surely, if ever agitation can be successful, it is now ! Mr. Parnell 
cannot be boasting. It is only a question of the measure of Home Rule, 
he tells his countrymen ; the rest is all but an accomplished fact. The 
Tories and the Irish, united, left Mr. Gladstone in a minority of three. 
This enormous Liberal vote came from Britain; not one Liberal was elected 
in Ireland ; so that the much spoken of English workingman, according 
to these returns, voted for Mr. Gladstone even when the Irish democrats 
apposed him ; for this campaign of 1885 was fought out to the bitter end 
in direct hostility to the Liberals. Every engine the Irish party could use 
was used against Mr. Gladstone and his following, and yet he received 
this large majority ; but when Mr. Gladstone appealed to the British 
workingman on another issue, one year later, there was an opposite result. 

The Tories would be in the minority, if the Parnellites changed sides, 
by 109 votes. So that the Irish Parliamentary party could not possibly 
hope for a more favorable position — it would indeed be impossible — than 
that which they now enjoyed. If this story, told the Irish people by the 
three great leaders of the doctrine of arguing England out of Ireland, 
O'Connell, Butt, and Parnell, have even a shadow of power to show, this 
was surely the time. Mr. Parnell was in the saddle, neither British 
party could hold power without his vote ; he is on the summit of the 



596 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

fortress, and cannot only sweep the foe in front, but take them by flank 
and reverse fire. If this victory is possible, surely now it can be gained. 
Alas, for generations of folly and untold wealth spent in its pursuit ! It 
was utterly and completely impossible ; such a means to free a nation 
never came into the brains of any practical, sensible people. Men who 
take to this course simply want public life, ambition and promotion, 
honors and wealth. They are members of the British Parliam'ent and by 
virtue of that office servants of the British sovereign ; to style such men 
Irish Nationalists as Ireland's patriots of '98, and other men since, who 
have dared the dungeon and the halter for their native land, is to trail 
the noble title of patriot in the gutter of British party politics. Will- 
ingly or unwillingly they must become the allies of one or other of the 
enemy's political parties, and die either disappointed men, or else 
respectable, quiet going West-Britons. 

The new Parliament assembled at Westminster. Mr. Parnell and his 
eighty-five followers took their seats in the confidence of strength and 
near approach to power. In their sanguine mood, victory was in sight, 
it was within their grasp, they had but to snatch it and the field was won. 
Mr. T. P. O'Connor, speaking at a reception at that time, said in glow- 
ing language, "After seven long centuries of struggle, with various suc- 
cess, how proud we feel knowing that we live in the time when victory has 
been achieved, and that we are alive to witness the day when Ireland 
takes her place among the nations of the earth." " Gone forever was 
coercion," said Mr. Parnell, " and gone forever the time when the Briton 
was our master." 

If Ireland ever sees the time these gentlemen spoke of, it will be 
when the red flag of Britain goes down before the blows of a battling 
nation ; when Ireland defeats Britain in the field ; then and not till then will 
Ireland receive self-government. If cowardly teachings and more cowardly 
examples — for braggadocio and blustering over three or six months in jail 
are not the bravery that freeth nations — relegate this time to the Greek 
Kalends, independence for Ireland is postponed to the same indefinite 
period. 

The Tory Government, whom Mr. Parnell had been in alliance with 
against the Radicals, and who held before his eager gaze the tempting 
bait of Home Rule, met the new Parliament, which opened on Friday, 
January 21, 1886. They had scarcely more than permitted the new 
Legislature to assemble when their Irish policy was announced ; and 
through their mouthpiece, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, they informed the 
House of Commons that they proposed to bring in an Irish Coercion 
Bill, and a Bill to suppress the Irish National League. Great was the 
rage and indignation of the Parnellites. What a descent from the moun- 
tain top of hope, from which they gazed on Home Rule ! What were they 
to say to their countrymen, whom they had inflated with the same confi- 
dence which animated them ? To be insulted and flouted by a minority 
ministry to which they had given every possible aid and comfort during the 
recent general election ; a ministry that had held out such delusive 
promises, now so rudely dispelled the rosy dream which they and their 
people so foolishly indulged in. It was really too much to endure. And 
yet this treachery on the part of the Tories failed to teach them the old 
lesson, that British parties are the same in their government of Ireland. 
A few nights after the Tories were defeated on an English measure and 
compelled to resign. Once again Mr. Gladstone resumed the reins of 
power, and all was expectation as to what course the old Liberal leader 
would take. If he refused the Irish Home Rule, then indeed they were 
driven to despair ; that Mr. Gladstone foresaw the possibilities of intro- 
ducing some measure with the title of Home Rule attached, is evident 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 597 

from his previous careful utterances. Mr. Justin McCarthy informed the 
public that Mr. Gladstone had been a convert to Home Rule for eight 
years. If Mr. McCarthy means self-government for Ireland, that con- 
version is yet to take place. In 1881, in the London Guildhall, when Mr. 
Gladstone announced the arrest of Mr. Parnell in the melodramatic 
manner already recorded, it will be remembered he used these words : " It 
is not even on any point connected with what is popularly known as Home 
Rule, and which may be understood in any one of a hundred senses, some of 
them perfectly acceptable and even desirable, and others of them mischie- 
vous and revolutionary." These words, spoken by the English Premier at 
a time when he was imprisoning the Irish leader, the advocate of Home 
Rule, plainly tell us what was running through the mind of this aged 
statesman. Mr. Gladstone's definition of Home Rule was evidently " one 
of the hundred senses most desirable" to Englishmen, but most undesirable 
to Ireland. Genuine self-government for Ireland would be, in the Grand 
Old Man's imagination, both " mischievous and revolutionary." The 
Leeds Mercury, which seemed to understand the aged Liberal in Decem- 
ber, 1885, before the Tories were defeated, thus speaks on this subject : 
" Mr. Gladstone's plan for a Parliament in Ireland to deal with purely 
local affairs. The proposal is subject to very large limitations. 

"Duties of a protective nature shall not be imposed on British goods i» 
Ireland." 

The very key to the situation is foreshadowed, here. Ireland's great 
interest is manufactures. England's great interest is that Ireland con- 
tinue deprived of these rival industries. So long as Ireland can be made 
a "dumping" ground for English wares, manufactures in Ireland are an 
impossibility. Ireland needs a Legislature to make her own laws, and to 
legislate for every internal interest. Irish industries for her people, 
towers giantlike above the rest. This Leeds paper, speaking of a possible 
forthcoming Bill, declares it to be shorn of the one great need for Ireland 
— the means of giving employment to her people. 

Mr. Gladstone's return to power was almost simultaneous with the 
breaking out of a famine in certain parts of the West of Ireland. Eng- 
land's slow poison, starvation in Ireland, now and then becomes a serious 
epidemic, which is an inconvenience to Britain, as she prefers the Irish to 
die in the normal, regular course. Another famine fund was started in 
America six years previous. Mr. Parnell had assured the world this was 
to be the last begging box that should be sent round to feed the hungry 
Irish. Mr. Patrick Ford generously started a famine fund in the Irish 
World, which Mr. Davitt undertook to distribute. 

Mr. Gladstone saw that if he refused to entertain Home Rule 
Britain's great ally and protector in the government of Ireland, "legal 
agitation," would be irremediably ruined. The crisis was too acute for 
any minister, with British interests at heart, to attempt anything so open 
as hostility to Ireland's demand. He knew that Ireland was saved to 
England by the agitation of O'Connell, Butt, and Parnell, which drew 
away the attention of the Irish Nationalists from the only true remedy 
which has ever been applied since the beginning of the world's history — 
namely, Force — to free a nation from an alien conqueror. He knew that 
this agitation had corrupted and poisoned the minds of a great number of 
the Irish people in Ireland, and strange to say more especially in America ; 
and " legal agitation," which was legal nonsense, had come to be a 
respectable means of freeing Ireland, and was looked upon as the only 
just and moral remedy which the Irish should use as Christian people. 
He saw the effect of this agitation in the immense sums of money which 
came from America, all to be spent in the payment of orators and their 
traveling expenses. These expenses were incurred in teaching the Irish 



59 s THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

people what they knew practically already, that British rule was a monstrous 
grievance, and that by the imposing display of cheering and shouting 
masses, flaunting of banners, and the inspiriting influence of national 
music, Ireland would be liberated. This agitation created in Ireland 
political gala days, and men who passed as patriots came forth to tell them 
that all these great gatherings were victories, and their speeches would 
wind up by passing resolutions that the " Landlords must go," and that 
u Ireland must be free from the center to the sea," all of which had as 
much effect on Irish freedom as on the motion of the planets. Then, 
in the evening, the orators would be banqueted ; some local patriot 
would air his eloquence over the good things before him ; a man who 
would not risk his finger, or the loss of any position he held, for Ire- 
land ; but if he could talk hopefully of the prospects of the country 
they were all helping to ruin, he was cheered by the convivial and happy 
company. Outside the people were probably burning tar barrels and 
congratulating themselves on the approach of Ireland's long looked for 
demand of Home Rule. All this time the emigrant ship kept bearing 
away the people to other lands, the workhouse was filled with paupers, 
people were existing in a state of semi-starvation, while all this folly and 
squandering of Irish-American money went on. Which money, if the 
good people of the United States had poured it into New York Harbor, 
would have produced less harmful results for suffering Ireland. Irish- 
Americans, however, would subscribe their hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to aid Ireland by talk, and yet would not subscribe for the only 
practical way international issues could ever, or have ever been solved. 
The fruits of the agitation and the generations of British slavery had 
taught them that Ireland, their own land, was powerless — which was false 
— and that Britain, their foe, was all-powerful, and yet they who abused this 
foe more even than men who believed in fighting her, thought they could 
win from her magnanimity what they could not wrest as a right. Some 
of these things passed through the mind of Mr. Gladstone ; he knew he 
would drive Ireland into the arms of men who believe that " hurting Eng- 
land " was Ireland's only remedy. Not a very wonderful belief, the nations 
of the earth would say ; it is only Irish folly that has ever thought other- 
wise. Mr. Gladstone, himself, admitted that, had all Ireland risen as 
Wexford and Wicklow did in '98, Britain could not have retained her 
foothold in the island. And if ever Ireland is completely subjugated and 
the ancient race banished from her soil, some future British statesman 
will say, " Ireland could never have been conquered but for 'legal agitation? 
which kept the minds of the Irish on a ' delusive folly ' while we were 
banishing the race we could never suppress or destroy on the battlefield." 
Mr. Gladstone had to encounter, in his promise to give Ireland Home 
Rule, English prejudice and English hostility. English interests he could 
easily appease, for he was determined to make no concealment whatever, 
that he would not allow the Irish people to create manufactures or build 
up industries. He knew the Irish people were so much engaged in agri- 
culture that they were ignorant of their greatest weakness — lack of 
employment for the people — as they were also ignorant of their great 
physical strength as against Britain. But British prejudice against any 
seeming Irish autonomy he knew was a powerful factor against him ; and 
he also had to be careful not to offend the Parnellites, who held the 
greater portion of the Irish people in the hollow of their hand. He did 
not at that time know how far he could venture with these men, and had 
to feel his way carefully, for one false step he thought would precipitate 
them into the arms of the revolutionists. In this Mr. Gladstone found 
very soon he was wrong. These men, particularly the leading spirits, 
had so convinced themselves, and afterward the great masses of their 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 599 

countrymen, that Home Rule was near, that the action of the Tories 
shook Mr. Parnell and his lieutenants from the pinnacle of hope almost to 
the depths of despair. They saw before them, if Mr. Gladstone did not 
come to their rescue, a speedy dethronement from all the honors, emolu- 
ments, and advantages they enjoyed as leaders of the Irish people, and 
which entailed very little risk in return, or else, the choice of continuing 
their leadership as physical force revolutionists. If Mr. Gladstone refused 
to entertain Home Rule, as the Tories did, the Opposition would of course 
support them. The Irish people would not submit to carry on the "splen- 
did nonsense " of agitation further. Irish-Americans could use their money 
for the purchase of rifles and other weapons of destruction, and great as 
was Mr. Parnell's power, he knew he could not hold it, if the cup of 
hope, which he so recently held to Ireland's lips, was dashed to the 
ground by the course of events. Mr. Parnell and the greater portion of 
his party, who controlled the league, knew they had neither the courage nor 
self-sacrifice necessary to lead a revolutionary movement. They had practical 
proof that they tvere deficient in the stamina of real patriots, such as Wolfe 
Tone, George Washington, Robert Emmet, or Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 
and that they only possessed sufficient courage to die for Ireland in a 
song, or in a speech before cheering and admiring auditors. They 
remembered vividly the feelings they experienced when the Park tragedy 
sprung upon them, when, without a moment's reflection, animated with 
the most cowardly terror, they issued a proclamation, reckless of whom or 
what they were assailing ; in their abject fright they were not masters of 
themselves. Consequently, if Mr. Gladstone did not come to their aid, 
they had no alternative but to step down and out from their pedestal of 
wealth and power, or else join their countrymen in preparing to fight 
Britain. This meant facing real u dungeons, toils, and chains," and not the 
martyrdom of three or six months imprisonment, to come out freemen, 
with honors easily earned. 

This was the position of the two leaders, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Par- 
nell ; both were anxious to keep down strife, and both feared the effect of 
a refusal of Home Rule on the minds of men who were prepared to make 
any and every sacrifice for Ireland ; both knew that the great masses of 
the Irish people at home and abroad were sound on the question, no 
matter how misled they might have been by interested and weak leaders. 

Mr. Parnell knew very well that his following in the House was not 
the stuff from which to manufacture revolutionary soldiers. They were 
mere Parliamentarians ; weak, both physically and morally, on this issue. 
There were among them, it is true, many who had been good men — but 
they were corrupted by their surroundings ; but the great majority had no 
such patriotic courage as animated the men who fought at Lexington, 
Bunker Hill, Vinegar Hill, and Arklow. It is one thing to quote 
these men's heroic deeds, but another thing to put these deeds into 
practice. 

Mr. Gladstone had then before him a difficult task : to preserve Ireland 
to Britain by inducing Irishmen'to continue their agitation, and not turn 
their thoughts to what might prove too powerful and dangerous for Brit- 
ain to crush — Irish revolution — when it is remembered that Britain could 
not destroy by her arms anything approaching the dreadful destruction 
of peace. The lesson taught by the Boers had given him serious disquiet, 
and the complications which he feared would arise among strong Euro- 
pean powers, added to the wealth and power of the exiled Irish, convinced 
this able and far-seeing statesman that some measure with the name of 
Home Rule was necessary to accomplish his purpose. Had he known 
how far he could have ventured with the Parnellites he would have had 
less trouble ; but this he was unaware of ; each party was afraid of the 



600 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

other. Mr. Gladstone had not the faintest idea of giving Irishmen any 
control of their own affairs ; what he tried to do was to create a shadowy 
Parliament and government altogether under British control. But to do 
this to please the Parnellites, he knew it should have some outward 
semblance of reality, no matter how hollow it was inside ; but in investing 
his measure with this outward semblance he invoked hostile British 
prejudice even in his own Cabinet, and although he was giving Ireland 
less than Chamberlain proposed, as to material advantages in local affairs, 
which in neither case could have affected Irish national wealth, Mr. 
Gladstone's Bill bore all the trappings of mock sovereignty. He knew 
the sentimental side of the Irish character, and that the name of anything 
called a Parliament sitting in College Green would fill them with joy and 
enthusiasm, although it bore the same relations to a real Legislature as a 
stage fight does to a real battle, and that the results of victory, when all 
was over, would be the same for Ireland. He saw that the Irish were 
delighted when their Dublin Municipal Council changed the city flag to 
the national colors, degrading the immortal green of the nation to the mere 
emblem of a municipality. Britain hopes always to see the Irish banner 
the flag of a corporate town, but never the standard of a free and inde- 
pendent nation. Changing Sackville Street to O'Connell, and conferring 
the freedom of a city, the capital of an enslaved nation, all these toys and 
gewgaws pleased a certain section of the Irish people — why not give them 
another toy ? Open the murderous Yeomen's Parliament House in Col- 
lege Green, and let them have mock Home Rule ! 

But in trying to conciliate Ireland, by giving her a toy dressed up as 
self-government, he offended the prejudices and susceptibilities of the 
sentimental side of John Bull. He could not convince several members 
of his Cabinet that this yielding to Irish aspirations, did not in principle 
seem a violation of the supposed Union between these hostile nations, 
even although he gave away no material advantage and surrendered no 
control whatever. After several secessions from his Cabinet, which 
delighted the Irish, for why should English Radicals of such prominence 
as Hartington, Trevelyan, Bright, Chamberlain, and Sir Henry James 
leave the Cabinet ? — If Irishmen reflected more on the situation, they 
would soon see that the Radicals are more hostile to Home Rule than 
-even the Tories, for they are nervous of the question of trade and manu- 
factures — the long expected Home Rule Bill was announced finally to 
be introduced on April 8, 1886. On Thursday evening, April 8, 1886, all 
the elite of the clubs and drawing rooms of Belgravia and Mayfair, the 
diplomatic and representative world of fashion in London, all who could 
procure seats or standing room, were crowded into the Commons chamber 
of England to hear Mr. Gladstone's speech asking leave to introduce a 
Bill termed Home Rule for Ireland, and which measure the great 
'Commoner was to explain to the country. Royalty was represented by 
the Prince of Wales and his son, Prince Albert Victor, two probable 
occupants of the British throne. Irish hearts and hopes were centered 
round that chamber in Westminster. Dear old land of the Gael ! after 
the long night of centuries during which your sons so heroically died for 
you — as they are dying and struggling in this generation — they have 
been imprisoned, outlawed, and exiled for your freedom, yet notwith- 
standing this devotion of your sons to your emerald shore, where their 
heart's deep love is centered in you, their mother ; must their brothers at 
home be still taught the slave's doctrine, to look to the capital of the 
Sassanach invader for that freedom which brave men in all ages have 
won by their own right arms. 

As Mr. Gladstone rose the House was hushed in silence, every ear 
in that densely packed chamber was strained to catch each tone of his 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 601 

musical voice, and drink in every word that fell from the lips of that 
aged statesman, as Mr. John Dillon truly styled him, the " master of 
misconception" ; and he stamped upon his name with ineffaceable letters 
this title, by the marvelous manner he introduced a measure which 
more firmly riveted the foreigners' chains upon Irish limbs, and which 
he, with the audacity and effrontery of custom, called Home Rule. 

Mr. Gladstone spoke for over four hours, and during that time he 
skillfully wove a net so intricate that it has apparently enmeshed the 
intellects of the greater number of the human race, who have since 
discussed this so-called Home Rule from many standpoints, but none 
that we are aware of from the actual position, and that position was and 
will forever remain in discussing this Bill — the non-existence of the 
smallest particle of Home Rule in Mr. Gladstone's Bill so called, and a 
strong measure of coercion veiled under the clause which created the new 
Irish Executive. 

Mr. Gladstone entranced, stupefied, and set wondering his hearers by 
his marvelous power of language, his wizardlike jugglery of phrases, 
his creation of some hypothetical castle, only to demolish it in the 
sweeping tornado of his sentences. Now he proved to Englishmen what 
a grand benefit his Bill would bring to them, and then turning to the 
Parnellites, he showed them what a great future their country would 
enjoy, under the beneficent blessings his Bill would bring to them. He 
even had the astounding audacity to tell Irishmen it would confer upon 
them greater and more glorious results than if the war for independence 
in '98 of immortal memory had been crowned with success, and not, 
as it was, smothered in blood by his brutal countrymen, the foreign 
settler's yeomen, and their no less brutal hirelings, the Hessians. This 
man's stupendous ability appeared to paralyze them ; first this great 
magician marched through his subject ; then trotted, galloped, and 
finally charged. In the grand melee of his sentences his hearers were 
lost in astonishment. They knew his meaning must have been superbly 
magnificent, but 'twas so. hidden in the brilliant cloud of verbiage, 
which cantered, galloped, and charged unceasingly by, that this rested 
only in their fancy. It was the master mind of misconception drugging 
his Irish hearers. 

Numbers thronged to St. Stephen's to witness the stately spectacle of 
those marshaled sentences, and to admire how like a cloud of skirmishers 
they either concealed or scattered facts ; the eye and ear were dazed at 
the musical rhythm of their delivery. It was the genius of the master of 
language, the successor of a long line of great orators. To see and hear 
this aged statesman crowds of representative men and beautiful women, 
titled personages, soldiers of fame and men of letters, thronged to West- 
minster. The importance of the subject was lost sight of in the eminence 
of the expounder. But for Ireland, the importance of the subject was 
her life or death. Pauline Deschapelles did not linger with more devo- 
tion on the honeyed words of the Prince of Como, describing his palace 
amid eternal summer, than did Erin hang upon the words of that aged 
Briton. But the palace of the prince was not more a creation of Claude 
Melnotte's poetic imagination than was Home Rule for Erin a vision of 
ideality which that wondrous wizard, William Ewart Gladstone, conjured 
up to try and appease Irish discontent without in any way satisfying it 
by a single substantial concession. 

When Mr. Gladstone left general principles and began to state the 
provisions of the bill in detail, there must have been great anxiety among 
his hearers. To the astonishment of"those Irishmen present — Parnellite 
Members of Parliament and visitors, who expected that after the impas- 
sioned exordium just delivered the forthcoming bill would contain 



t>02 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

some great and genuine material concessions which would benefit their 
country — Mr. Gladstone distinctly told them that the promised Irish 
Parliament would have no power whatever over Irish tariffs or Irish 
trade. In the language of this master of misconception he thus explains 
the absence of the keystone from his promised arch called Home Rule : 
"There are exceptions of what I may call practical necessity for ordinary 
purposes. The first of these is the law of trade and navigation. I assume 
that as to trade and navigation at large it would be a great calamity to 
Ireland to be separated from Great Britain." 

How this giant intellect must have despised the puny minds he was 
addre.ssing both before and around him, especially the men whom Ire- 
land had delegated to demand self-government, when, after an opening 
address of almost unexampled advocacy of Ireland's cause by a British 
statesman, after perorations filled with such brilliant promise, he could 
continue the same speech by boldly advocating the unbroken robbery of 
Ireland by the uninterrupted deprivation of her commercial independence. 
What concealed irony must have been in Mr. Gladstone's mind when he 
in such keen and satiric language unblushingly told the Parnellites that 
Home Rule in its vital point would be, if granted to Ireland, a great 
calamity. It will be remembered that a short time previous they had 
heard him announce that the success of the Irish war of independence in 
T798 could not convey to that country greater blessings than he was about 
to offer her, and now they listened to his deliberate declaration that the 
corner stone of Irish prosperity — the control of her trade and her tariff — 
will continue to remain under the control and at the disposal of a foreign 
nation. 

But although Mr. Gladstone, by this " exception of practical necessity" 
left his Bill worthless, so far as Irish prosperity could be promoted by 
its provisions, was there not enough of Home Rule left to strengthen the 
hands of the Irish people at home — some modicum of potver by which the 
complete demand would be by and by wrung from the British ? A plau- 
sible pretext for fresh constitutional agitation, or additional power to 
renew the struggle in another place. It is this delusive cry of gaining 
freedom by installments which the Provincialists use to the Nationalists to 
induce them to join their ranks. 

The orator continued, using very momentous language : 

" My next duty is to state what the powers of the proposed legislative 
body would be. The capital article of that legislative body will be that 
it should have the control of the executive government of Ireland 2& well as 
of legislative business." 

" The problem of responsible government has been solved for us in our 
colonies. [Cheers.] It works very well there, and in perhaps a dozen cases, 
in different quarters of the globe, it works to our perfect satisfaction. 

" As I have already said, the Administrative power by a respo?isible 
government would pass under our proposals with the legislative power. 
Then, sir, the legislative body would be subject to the provisions of the 
Act in the first place as to its own composition." 

There is no equivocation here ; it conveys to everyone who understands 
the English language a plain statement that the bill would create a respon- 
sible Irish Ministry. There was naturally great joy in the Irish heart ; 
here was a most important " stepping stone" to self-government conceded, 
for who could or would be so ungfacious as to doubt the sincerity of 
this eminent convert to Irish Home Rule ! 

When Mr. Parnell arose to take part in this important debate, there 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 603 

must have been great anxiety in the Ministerial ranks. Had the wizard 
tongue of the Grand Old Man persuaded the Irish representatives 
that their best policy was to accept the Bill, even shorn, as it was, of any 
material benefits ? 

They had not long to wait. Mr. Parnell's usual cold delivery was this 
evening changed to effusive compliments, warmly and lavishly bestowed 
on the British Premier. The cool, careful statesman, who was wont to 
carefully weigh every promised measure coming from a British Minister, 
seemed only too eager to grasp at the seeming points of advantage and 
hug this promised measure with delight. Himself and his followers were 
straining for some solid and substantial success to show the Irish people, 
after the many years of agitation supported by generous remittances from 
the American Irish, this visionary promised measure must not only be 
accepted, but magnified in importance before mankind, especially in 
America where their great financial support came from, and from whence 
they hoped an impetus would be given to unloose the generous American 
purse to replenish the Provincialist treasury. 

Mr. Parnell paid his chief, the British Premier, every possible 
compliment. He said : " He has drafted this Bill, he has explained it to 
the House, in a speech of extraordinary eloquence. To Ireland I sup- 
pose — to none of the sons of Ireland — at any time has there ever been 
given the genius and talent of the Right Honorable gentleman — certainly 
nothing approaching it in these days. 

11 But there are undoubtedly great faults and blots on the measure. 

" He has seen his officers leaving his side one by one, and drawing their 
swords as the Right Honorable Member for the Border Burghs [Mr. 
Trevelyan] did to-night against him. And he has, I suppose, to shape his 
measure to meet the tremendous opposition which has been evolved. 
But there are several points which it will be our duty, when the measure 
reaches the committee stage, to oppose very strongly, and to press for 
other serious modification and amendment. 

" There is another point to which I wish to allude — namely, with regard 
to vote by order. As explained by the Right Honorable gentleman the 
first order, selected by a fancy franchise, is given the right of hanging up any 
Bill for three years. I understand the words of the Right Honorable gen- 
tleman to be these — 'Three years or until there is a dissolution, which- 
ever is the longer.' I think that that would indicate three years as the 
minimum of time during which they could hang up a Bill, and, if a disso- 
lution did not take place before three years, the Bill would be hung up for 
a still longer period. I should be glad if I were mistaken on this point ; 
it is possible that I may be ; but in any case, whatever the period might be, 
it would be absolutely in the power of the first order, in which, from the 
nature of the case, the popular party in Ireland couhd not obtain many repre- 
sentatives to hang up any measure they pleased, and so to bring the proceedings 
of the Legislature to a deadlock." 

Mr. Parnell criticises the organization of the so-called Irish Parliament, 
which was a stupendous insult and will be written about later. How 
eagerly the Irish Parliamentary leader apologises for the deficiencies of the 
promised measure on the plea that Mr. Gladstone had encountered tre- 
mendous opposition in framing the Bill. But the principal and vital defi- 
ciency in the measure, which Mr. Gladstone so deliberately told the 
House when he in effect said the proposed Legislature would have no 
authority whatever — no power conceded to it to develop and create Irish 
manufactures, this capital and supreme right, of which the British would 
still deprive the Irish people — was completely ignored by Mr. Parnell. 



604 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The man who publicly stated so many times during tht recent general 
election that " We would never accept anything but the full and complete 
right to arrange our own affairs and to make our land a nation, and to se- 
cure for Ireland, free from outside control, the right to direct her own course 
among the peoples of the earth," he is now willing to accept a measure 
which cannot bring to Ireland the smallest prosperity. Under its provisions 
no possible increase can come to the national wealth ; that much is defi- 
nitely settled. Whether it will bring increase to national power depends 
upon the fulfillment of the Premier's plighted words publicly expressed 
before the world from the rostrum of the British Commons. Mr. Parnell 
speaks of altering the measure in committee. If great principles could 
be inserted at the committee stage, then any coercion measure could be 
accepted on the second reading, on the plea that the Irish would so 
change it in committee that it would emerge a measure creating Ireland 
an independent nation. But Mr. Parnell was not talking to the members 
of that House when he spoke of changes in the measure in committee ; he 
was speaking to the great outside world that does not understand the 
details of such questions, and more especially the great Irish-American 
public who are completely ignorant of the routine of British law-making. 

The Parnellites cabled to America and Australia the joyful news that 
the Bill was a perfectly satisfactory measure, and, lacking a few unimportant 
details, could be accepted as a satisfactory settlement of the Irish question. 
Public sentiment and public passion pervaded the Irish masses the world 
over — alas ! there was no public opinion based on reasoning judgment — 
every city and state rose up to honor the Grand Old Man ; congratula- 
tions which exhausted all the adjectives in the English language were 
cabled to Messrs. Gladstone and Parnell, complimenting the British states- 
men and the Irish Parliamentary leader upon the wondrous good 
things they were about to give to sorrowing Ireland. Subscriptions 
flowed with unstinted generosity from these warm-hearted donors ; Amer- 
icans of other races vied with Irishmen both in the liberality of their 
gifts and the enthusiasm of their praise. 

In Ireland the same encomiums were heaped upon the Bill, the Irish 
race all over the world was intoxicated with great joy. The Parnellites 
had been successful beyond their expectations. No one for a moment 
stopped to criticise the source of the universal delight ; the Irish leaders' 
description was accepted, without the smallest reservation, as a great 
truth, that the British Prime Minister had introduced a genuine Home 
Rule Bill, which was certain, eventually, to become law. 

To the names of Gladstone and Parnell was added the name of the 
illustrious and immortal Robert Emmet ; some few thinking Irishmen 
shuddered at the blasphemy, but the mercurial Celt was, for the time, 
drunk with the excitement of the news told to him by the Parnellites as a 
glorious success. 

The debate was resumed in the British Parliament on the Monday fol- 
lowing, by Lord Randolph Churchill, who said : " I would draw the 
attention of the House to the proposed composition of the new Irish Par- 
liament. It is proposed by the Prime Minister that the new Irish Parlia- 
ment shall be composed of two orders of members elected by different 
constituencies. I have taken a great deal of trouble since Thursday night 
to consult the highest authorities I could get access to, and I believe 
I am right in saying that, if you search ancient and modern history 
through and through, you will find no precedent in the records of 
constitutional government for such a proposal as is now made to the 
House of Commons. 

" It is a remarkable thing, and one well worthy of the Radical party 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 605 

below the gangway, that the leader of the great Liberal party . . . 
should at this time propose, for the constitution of a representative 
assembly, so reactionary and so discarded a machinery as property 
qualification." 

Mr. Gladstone, in his speech introducing Home Rule, mentioned, 
that while Hungary enjoyed her own Parliament, the Parliament of 
the Empire sat in Vienna to make Imperial laws. An Austrian gentle- 
man published the following in reply : "It is not a fact that at Vienna 
sits the Parliament of the Empire. In Vienna sit the ' Oesterreichischer 
Reichsrath,' id est, the Austrian Parliament, which represents only a 
part of the Empire, viz., all those parts of the monarchy which do not 
belong to the crown of St. Stephen. A Parliament of the Empire — 
that is to say of the entire Hapsburg monarchy — does not exist. The 
population of Austria proper was, and is still, larger than the population 
of Hungary. The last figures are for Austria, 22,144,244 inhabitants ; 
for Hungary, 15,725,710 inhabitants." 

This Austrian gentleman's letter may be supplemented by saying 
that we pointed out before in this volume, there is no such thing as an 
Imperial Parliament in the British Empire. A Parliament of the entire 
Guelph monarchy does not and never did exist, and yet English, Ameri- 
can, and European writers will continue to call the London Parliament 
Imperial, while it is simply British. 

Mr. Gladstone, the master juggler of words, had described his Bill 
which he called Home Rule for Ireland. It would be impossible for any 
Irishman of national experience, and who knew the character of the Eng- 
lish statesman, to attempt to pass any just criticism on the measure until 
the actual Bill itself was in his hands. That the legislative body had 
grave defects, both as to composition and powers, was very apparent, 
but whether these were such as to destroy its usefulness altogether, or 
only to impair them, was also a question to be decided when Irishmen had 
the Bill before them. One thing was placed beyond yea or nay, so far as 
Mr. Gladstone 's words could place it. It was stated publicly in the House 
of Commons, it went from the portals of that chamber to the world from the 
lips of William Ewart Gladstone, England's Prime Minister, that Ireland 
was to receive a responsible Ministry ; an Irish Constitutional Govern- 
ment such as Britain enjoys ; such as the Dominion of Canada or the 
self-government colonies 'enjoy. 

Good men would reprove any scoffer or doubter, who would have the 
courage to say that this great British Minister could make so public a 
statement, and afterward permit it to be proved a falsehood. 

The same is said to this date, should any doubters question Mr. 
Gladstone's sincerity in the many public promises he is so lavishly making 
to Ireland. These rebukes come from good men, who have had neither 
opportunity nor leisure, even if they had the capacity to study the actual 
issues between Britain and Ireland, and the strong and binding interests 
which must forever forbid any British statesman giving to Ireland what 
her Parliamentary representatives demand — as well ask a British Minister 
to establish an Irish Republic. 

All over the United States public meetings were called to indorse the 
Bill, and congratulate the great Liberal English Minister. It is one of 
Ireland's losses that her exiled sons, who are so devoted to her, do not 
understand the intricacies, shifting diplomacy, and backsliding of 
British Ministers, in their dealings with Irish politics. Honest and 
straightforward themselves, they gauge other men by their own generous, 
truthful natures, and how could they be expected to doubt so plain a state- 
ment from the lips of a man so eminent as Mr. Gladstone ? 



606 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

The British Premier, among other Irish criticisms and compliments 
delivered in the course of his famous speech, speaks thus of the strength 
of Irish National feeling : " I hold there is such a thing as local 
patriotism ; the Scotch nationality is as strict as ever it was, and should 
the occasion arise — which I believe it never can — it will be as ready to 
assert itself as in the days of Bannockburn. I do not believe that local 
patriotism is an evil. I believe it is stronger in Ireland even than in 
Scotland. Englishmen are eminently English, Scotchmen are profoundly 
Scotch, and, if I read Irish history aright, misfortune and calamity have 
wedded her sons to her soil. The Irishman is more profoundly Irish, 
but it does not follow that, because his local patriotism is keen, he is in- 
capable of imperial patriotism." 

It is difficult for any Irishman to tell, when Mr. Gladstone speaks, 
whether his words are the real sentiments of his heart and his judgment, 
or a brilliant jugglery of language, to try and convince his opponents of 
a certain set of ideas to suit his own arguments for the time being ; but 
Irishmen know that the feeling, of which Mr. Gladstone was then the 
mouthpiece, is very largely shared by his British fellow-countrymen on 
Irish national sentiment. Mr. Gladstone is quite correct when he informs 
his countrymen that Irishmen have been possessed of strong local senti- 
ment, and this local sentiment, or, as Mr. Gladstone terms it, patriotism, 
has been sometimes too strong for the healthier feeling of nationality. 
But time and education have done a great deal, if not altogether to eradi- 
cate, at least to keep in proper subjection to the grander love of common 
country this local patriotism, and the old differences as to imaginary 
superiority between Connaughtmen and Leinstermen, and between Ulster- 
men and Munstermen, have almost altogether disappeared. In Ireland, 
there is scarce a vestige of it to-day, except when spoken of in playful 
badinage. Here, in the United States, strange to say, it has not alto- 
gether died out, although even here it is fading fast. But its remaining 
so long in its adopted country is easily explained, when it is recollected 
what an influx of uneducated Irishmen came like a torrent to this 
country, during the great '48 exodus. This ignorance and poverty were 
the direct outcome of the British invaders' accursed system. These men, 
filled with all their early prejudices, settled near each other, and this 
local Irish sentiment is found to-day in certain parts of this great conti- 
nent peopled by Irish from some one locality at home. The county 
organizations which exist here are a relic of this sentiment, but, unlike 
the sentiments of their founders, they now inculcate a healthy fraternity 
between all Irishmen. Irishmen have also had their Bannockburns, and, 
although these internal battles are further back in history, tradition has 
preserved them among our people, where no written history can be 
found, but like their British neighbors, while possessing all the pride of 
local characteristics and affections for the county or province of their 
birth, they are, above all and before all, Irishmen. They know no 
north, no south, no east, no west. 

What matter that at different shrines 

We pray unto one God — 
What matter that at differenttimes 

Our fathers won this sod ? 
In fortune and in name we're bound 

By stronger links than steel ; 
And neither can be safe nor sound 

But in the other's weal. 

But this sentiment of nationality bears no such local significance as 
Mr. Gladstone alludes to. It is true that the Englishman remains 
English, and the Welshman Welsh, and the Scotchman Scotch, all bear- 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 607 

ing what Mr. Gladstone terms local patriotism. But there is a stronger 
common band which unites them. They are all Britons ; they are all the 
sons of one seagirt island, Britain. They are all bound in one common 
union of interest and government ; the laws are made to suit their neces- 
sities, their wishes, and their aspirations. They are freemen, who shape 
their own destiny. The flag which flutters over them is an emblem of 
their sons' heroic deeds and is the banner of their island home, so full of 
grand memories which thrill their souls and make them proud that they 
are Britons. 

For them their national drawbacks are national virtues, their path of 
conquest and of bloodshed and plunder they look upon as a career of 
glory. Their Irish hangings or blowing Indian sepoys from before their 
guns, and their many acts of rapine and slaughter, they look upon as a 
fitting punishment for those who resist their usurped authority and reject 
their control. 

The Irish have no share in their sentiments, any more than the 
Spaniard or the Frenchman. Their local love, like rivers to the sea, flows 
into the ocean of natural affection which they cherish for their beloved 
motherland. Green Erin of the streams, their hopes and joys are inter- 
minably bound up in her future. As their lives and memories have been 
in her past, no stranger could measure or gauge the depth of this illimit- 
able love for their suffering country, a love that broadens and intensifies 
with her sufferings and her sorrows. In the same proportion it increases 
their bitter hatred for her persecutor and oppressor. Thus there flows a 
dark stream of hate side by side with this pure rivulet of love. They can 
sacrifice the dearest human ties for their suffering nation — father, mother, 
brother, sister, and those best affections that can bind the human heart — 
home, wife, and children. How many of the people, even of the present 
generation, have left home to face apparent certain death, and some there 
have been who will never return again. Their widowed wives and orphan 
babes will never in this world meet their loving gaze ; men whose memories 
must be enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen, whose very deaths 
must remain unrecorded, owing to the fancied exigencies of the situation. 
How many other homes have been wrecked and every misfortune that 
can fall on fallen fortunes, clings around them through the pure, unselfish 
love of native land. But the one grand consolation cheers on the patriots 
in their poverty and misfortunes : they can say with the dead O'Donnell, 
facing the British halter, " They have done their duty." How can a Briton 
understand this love of country in Irishmen, or their deep-seated hatred 
of her invader ? a feeling they imbibe with their mother's milk, and the 
first lesson they learn as lisping babes in the hanging, shooting, slaying, 
or imprisonment of some of their people by the ruthless Saxon. These 
traditions can never be eradicated while the Briton's flag floats as an 
emblem of conquest over their country. This love of Ireland, which fills 
up the Irishman's being is a feeling as difficult of comprehension to a 
Briton as is the conception of Paradise to ordinary mortality. Their 
patriotism is national, not local, as Mr. Gladstone expressed it ; they have 
no common tie of either sentiment or interest with the Englishman, 
Welshman, or Scotchman. Their interests and British interests run 
in opposite directions. Their traditions, history, and racial proclivi- 
ties have no common bond of union and never could. Even if 
Ireland were a self-governed island, and enjoying all the liberties 
possessed by Canada, they could never feel that sentiment toward 
the British flag which the Canadian of British origin feels for the 
British empire. It is better to speak the truth upon this subject ; while 
Irishmen would remain faithful to any national compact they should enter 
into as a people, they could never have that imperial patriotism Mr. Glad- 



608 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

stone speaks of. It is not in the nature of things this could ever be. 
They would always secretly pine for their own national banner, which 
alone can inspire their love, their sentiment, and devotion. They have 
the same union with the Briton as the other members of the European 
family, Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, yes, and even less— for they 
remember. If British statesmen could free their minds of this delusion 
which they cherish, it would be well, perhaps, for both peoples. Their 
misfortunes and their tyrannies have taught Irish people to play the hypo- 
crite ; in fact, they are compelled to do so, for a genuine expression of 
Irish sentiment is treason by British law, and liable to such punishment ; 
hence, British people, unless those who think, do not understand Irish- 
men. But on their side the British masses, who are completely ignorant 
of their history or the reasons for the poverty-stricken and wretched con- 
dition of the harvestmen who visit their shores annually, hate Irishmen 
with an increasing hatred, consider every gross stupidity and blunder 
which their writers choose to attribute to them as the offspring of 
an inferior and degraded nationality. The educated and traveled Irish- 
man, when he meets British merchants or tourists abroad, is very fre- 
quently taken for an Englishman out of compliment to his culture 
and knowledge, and when the error is corrected the supercilious Briton 
makes the amende, acknowledging the fact by an implied insult to 
the Irishman's country and race. 

One of the remarkable facts attached to the public enthusiasm over 
Mr. Gladstone's Bill for Irish Home Rule, was this, that during all those 
public meetings and cordial thanks and congratulations, they were 
applauding a myth, for there was actually no Bill whatever in existence. 
Led astray by the Parnellite indorsement these public meetings were 
held almost spontaneously, and the premature approval and hearty 
indorsement of resolutions were all too previous, as the measure approved 
of might and possibly might not, when presented, be the same Bill which 
Mr. Gladstone described in the British Commons some days before. 

On April 16, after receiving thousands of thanks, kindly and grateful 
expressions from over-enthusiastic Irishmen and Irish-Americans, the 
Liberal Premier gives the Bill to the world. There was not the smallest 
criticism attempted ; the current of praise had become a torrent, and the 
man or men, who would stop to point out grave defects, would be swept 
along in the tornado as a venturesome sculler who had the temerity to 
approach too near the Niagara cataract would be dashed into fragments 
by the rush of the giant waters. The increasing and unstinted praise it 
received from its numerous admirers was deafening, the roar of the 
mighty waterfall could not more effectively efface the tones of the 
human voice than did public sentiment in Ireland and the United States 
drown the smallest attempt at criticism. 

The Bill is given here in full as presented by the British Premier to 
Parliament. 

THE HOME RULE BILL. 



Gladstone's measure of autonomy for Ireland — the full text. 



A Bill to Amend the Provision for the Future Government of Ireland. 

Be it enacted by the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty, and by and with the consent of 
the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, 
and by the authority of the same, as follows : 

LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY. 

I. On and after the appointed day there shall be established in Ireland a Legislature, 
consisting of her Majesty the Queen and an Irish Legislative Body. 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 609 

II. With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act mentioned, it shall 
be lawful for her Majesty the Queen, and with the advice of the Irish Legislative Body, 
to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, and by any such law 
to alter and repeal any law in Ireland. 

III. The Legislature of Ireland should not make laws relating to the following 
matters, or any of them : 

(1) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession to the Crown or a Regency. 

(2) The making of peace or war. 

(3) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval forces, for the 
defense of the realm. 

(4) Treaties and other relations with foreign States or the relations between the various 
parts of her Majesty's dominions. 

(5) Dignities or titles of honor. 

(6) Prize or booty of war. 

(7) Offenses against the law of nations, or offenses committed in violation of any 
treaty made or hereafter to be made between her Majesty and any foreign State ; or 
offenses committed on the high seas. 

(8) Treason, alienation, or naturalization. 

(9) Trade, navigation, or quarantine. 

(10) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this act mentioned with 
respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in Ireland. 

(11) Beacons, light-houses, or sea marks. 

(12) The coinage, the value of foreign money ; or legal tender, or weights and meas- 
ures ; or 

(13) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights, to the use or profits of any 
works or inventions. 

Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. 

IV. The Irish Legislature shall not make any law — 

(1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof ; or 

(2) Imposing any disability or conferring any privilege on account of religious belief ; or 

(3) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain any place of 
denominational education, or any denominational institution of charity ; or 

(4) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public 
money without attending the religious instruction at that school ; or 

(5) Impairing without either the leave of her Majesty in Council first obtained, on an. 
address presented by the Legislative Body of Ireland, or the consent of the Corporation 
interested, the rights, property, or privileges of any existing Corporation incorporated by- 
Royal Charter or Local and General Act of Parliament ; or 

(6) Imposing or relating to duties of Customs and duties of Excise as defined by this 
Act or either of such duties, or affecting any Act relating to such duties or either of them ; or 

(7) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared to be alterable by the Irish 
Legislature. 

V. Her Majesty the Queen shall have the same prerogative with respect to summon- 
ing, proroguing, and dissolving the Irish Legislative Body as her Majesty has with respect 
to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Imperial Parliament. 

VI. The Irish Legislative Body, whenever summoned, may have continuance for five 
years, and no longer ; to be reckoned from the day on which any such Legislative Body 
is appointed to meet. 

EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY. 

VII. (1) The Executive Government of Ireland shall continue vested in her Majesty, 
and shall be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of her Majesty, with the aid of 
such officers and such councils as to her Majesty may from time to time seem fit. 

(2) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by her Majesty, 
the Lord Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of her Majesty to bills passed by the 
Irish Legislative Body, and shall exercise the prerogatives of her Majesty in respect of the 
summoning, proroguing, and dissolving of the Irish Legislative Body, and any prerogatives 
the exercise of which may be delegated to him by her Majesty. 

VIII. Her Majesty may, by order in Council, from time to time place under the con- 
trol of the Irish Government, for the purposes of that Government, any such lands and 
buildings in Ireland as may be vested in or held in trust for her Majesty. 

CONSTITUTION OF THE LEGISLATIVE BODY. 

IX. (1) The Irish Legislative Body shall consist of a. first and second order. 

(2) The two orders shall deliberate together, and shall vote together, except that if 
any question arises in relation to legislation, or to the standing orders or rules of procedure, 
or to any other matter in that behalf in this Act specified, and such question is to be 
decided by vote, each order shall, if a majority of the members present of either order 
demand a separate vote, give their votes in like manner as if they were separate Legislative 



Oio THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Bodies, and if the result of the voting of the two orders does not agree the question shall 
be resolved in the negative. 

X. The first order of the Irish Legislative Body shall consist of one hundred and 
three members, of whom seventy-five shall be elective members and twenty-eight peerage 
members. 

(i) Each elective member shall at the date of his election, and during his period of 
membership, be bona fide possessed of property, which (a) if real, or partly real and partly 
personal, yields two hundred pounds a year or upwards, fee of all charges ; or (/;) if per- 
sonal, yields the same income, or is of the capital value of four thousand pounds or 
upwards, free of all charges. 

(2) For the purposes of electing the elective members of the first order of the Legis- 
lative Body, Ireland shall be divided into the electoral districts specified in the first 
schedule to this Act, and each such district shall return the number of members in that 
behalf specified in that schedule. 

(3) The elective members shall be elected by the registered electors of each electoral 
district, and for that purpose a register of electors shall be made annually. 

(4) An elector in each electoral district shall be qualified as follows : That is to say, 
he shall be of full age, and not subject to any legal incapacity, and shall have been during 
the twelve months next preceding the 20th day of July in any year, the owner or occupier 
of some land or tenement within the district of a net annual value of £2$ or upwards. 

(5) The term of office of an elective member shall be ten years. 

(6) In every fifth year, 37 or 38 of the elective members, as the case requires, shall 
retire from office, and their places shall be filled by election. The members to retire shall 
be those who have been members for the longest time without re-election. 

(7) The offices of the peerage members shall be filled as follows, that is to say : 

(a) Each of the Irish peers who on the appointed day is one of the 2S Irish Represent- 
ative Peers, shall, on giving his written assent to the Lord Lieutenant, become a peerage 
member of the first order of the Irish Legislative Body ; and, if at any time within 30 
years after the appointed day, any such peer vacates his office by death or resignation, the 
vacancy shall be filled by the election to that office by the Irish peers of one of their 
number in the manner heretofore in use respecting the election of Irish Representative 
Peers, subject to adaptation, as provided by this Act ; and if the vacancy is not so filled 
within the proper time it shall be filled by the election of an elective member, (b) If 
any of the 28 peers aforesaid does not, within one month after the appointed day, give 
such assent to be a peerage member of the first order, the vacancy so created shall be 
filled up as if he had assented and vacated his office by resignation. 

(8) A peerage member shall be entitled to hold office during his life, or until the expira- 
tion of thirty years from the appointed day, whichever period is the shortest. At the 
expiration of such thirty years the offices of all the peerage members shall be vacated as if 
they were dead, and their places shall be filled by elective members, qualified and elected 
in manner provided by this Act with respect to elective members of the first order, and 
such elective members may be distributed by the Irish Legislature among the electoral 
districts, so, however, that care should be taken to give additional members to the most 
populous places. 

(9) The offices of members of the first order shall not be vacated by the dissolution of 
the Legislative Body. 

(10) The provisions in the second schedule to this Act relating to the members of the 
first order of the Legislative Body shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in the 
body of this Act. 

XL (1) Subject, as in this section hereafter mentioned, the second order of the Legis- 
tive Body shall consist of 204 members. 

(2) The members of the second order shall be chosen by the existing constituencies of 
Ireland, two by each constituency, with the exception of the City of Cork, which shall be 
divided into two divisions in manner set forth in the third schedule of this Act, and two 
members shall be chosen by each of such divisions. 

(3) Any person who, on the appointed day, is a member representing an existing Irish 
constituency in the House of Commons shall, on giving his written assent to the Lord 
Lieutenant, become a member of the second order of the Irish Legislative Body as if he had 
been elected by the constituency which he was representing in the House of Commons. 
Each of the members for the City of Cork on the said day may elect for which of the divi- 
sions of that city he wishes to be deemed to have been elected. 

(4) If any member does not give such written assent within one month after the 
appointed day, his place shall be filled by election in the same manner and at the same 
time as if he had assented and vacated his office by death. 

(5) If the same person is elected to both orders he shall, within seven days after the 
meeting of the Legislative Body, or if the body is sitting at the time of the election, 
within seven days after the election, declare in which order he will serve, and his member- 
ship of the other order shall be void, and be filled by a fresh election. 

(6) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the Legislature of 
Ireland at any time to pass an Act enabling the Royal University of Ireland to return not 



GENERAL ELFCTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 611 

more than two members to the second order of the Irish Legislative Body, in addition to 
the number of members above mentioned. 

Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the Irish Legislature, after 
the first dissolution of the Legislative Body which occurs, to alter the constitution or elec- 
tion of the second order of that body, due regard being had in the distribution of members 
to the population of the constituencies, provided that no alteration shall be made in the 
number of such order. 

FINANCE. 

XII. (1) For the purpose of providing for the public service of Ireland, the Irish 
Legislature may impose taxes other than duties of customs or excise, as defined by this Act, 
ivhich duties shall continue to be imposed and levied, and under the direction of the Imperial 
Parliament only. 

(2) On and after the appointed day there shall be an Irish Consolidated Fund separate 
from the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. 

(3) All taxes imposed by the Legislature of Ireland and all other public revenues 
under the control of the Government of Ireland shall, subject to any provisions touching 
the disposal thereof contained in any Act passed in the present session respecting the sale 
and purchase of land in Ireland, be paid into the Irish Consolidated Fund, and be appro- 
priated to the public service of Ireland according to law. 

XIII. (1) Subject to the provisions for the reduction of cessor thereof in this section 
mentioned, there shall be made on the part of Ireland to the Consolidated Fund of the 
United Kingdom the following annual contributions in every financial year, that is to say 
— (a) The sum of one million four hundred and sixty-six thousand pounds on account of 
the interest on and management of the Irish share of the National Debt, (b) The sum of 
one million six hundred and sixty-six thousand pounds on account of the expenditure on 
the army and navy of the United Kingdom, (c) The sum of one hundred and ten thou- 
sand pounds on acconnt of the Imperial civil expenditure of the United Kingdom. 
(d) The sum of one million pounds on account of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the 
Dublin Metropolitan Police. 

(2) During the period of thirty years from this section taking effect, the said annual 
contributions shall not be increased, but may be reduced, or cease, as hereinafter men- 
tioned. After the expiration of the said thirty years the said contributions shall, save as 
otherwise provided by this section, continue until altered in manner provided by this 
section with respect to the alteration of this Act. 

(3) The Irish share of the national debt shall be reckoned at forty-eight million 
pounds bank annuities, and there shall be paid in every financial year on behalf of 
Ireland to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt, an annual sum of 
three hundred and sixty thousand pounds, and the permanent annual charge for the 
National Debt on the consolidated fund of the United Kingdom shall be reduced by that 
amount, and the said annual sum shall be applied by the said commissioners as a Sinking 
Fund for the redemption of the National Debt ; and the Irish share of the National Debt 
shall be reduced by the amount of the National Debt so redeemed ; and the said annual 
contribution on account of the interest on and management of the Irish share of the 
National Debt shall from time to time be reduced by a sum equal to the interest upon the 
amount of the National Debt from time to time so redeemed, but the last mentioned sum 
shall be paid annually to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt in 
addition to the above-mentioned annual Sinking Fund, and shall be so paid and be applied 
as if it were part of that Sinking Fund. 

(4) As soon as an amount of the National Debt equal to the said Irish share thereof 
has been redeemed under the provisions of this section, the said annual contribution on 
account of the interest on and management of the Irish share of the National Debt, and 
the said annual sum for a Sinking Fund shall cease. 

(5) If it appears to her Majesty that the expenditure in respect of the army and navy 
of the United Kingdom, or in respect of Imperial civil expenditure of the United King- 
dom for any financial year has been less than fifteen times the amount of the contribution 
above-named on account of the same matter, a sum equal to one-fifteenth part of the 
diminution shall be deducted from the current annual contribution for the same matter. 

(6) The sum paid from time to time by the Commissioners of her Majesty's Woods 
and Forests and Land Revenues to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom on 
account of the hereditary revenues of the Crown in Ireland shall be credited to the Irish 
Government and go in reduction of the said annual contribution payable on account of the 
Imperial civil expenditure of the United Kingdom, but shall not be taken into account 
in calculating whether such diminution as above mentioned has or has not taken place in 
such expenditure. 

(7) If it appears to her Majesty that the expenditure in respect of the Royal Irish 
Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police for any financial year has been less than 
the contribution above named, on account of such Constabulary and Police, the current 
contribution shall be diminished by the amount of such difference. 

(S) This section shall take effect from and after the 31st day of March, 1887. 



612 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLE*. 

XIV. (i) On and after such day as the Treasury may direct, all moneys from time to 
time collected in Ireland on account of the duties of Customs or the duties of Excise, as 
defined by this Act,shall under such regulations as the Treasury from time to time may make, 
be carried to a separate account (in this Act referred to as the Customs and Excise account), 
and applied in the payment of the following sums in priority, as mentioned in this section, 
that is to say : First, of such sum as is from time to time directed by the Treasury in 
respect to the costs, charges, and expenses, and incident to the collection and manage- 
ment of the said duties in Ireland, not exceeding four per cent, of the amount collected 
there. Secondly, of the annual contributions required by this Act to be made to the Con- 
solidated Fund of the United Kingdom. Thirdly, of the annual sums required by this 
Act to be paid to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt. Fourthly, 
of all sums by this Act declared to be payable out of the moneys carried to the Customs 
and Excise account. Fifthly, of all sums due to the Consolidated Fund of the United 
Kingdom for interest or Sinking Fund in respect to any loans made by the issue of bank 
annuities or otherwise to the Government of Ireland under any Act passed in the present 
session relating to the purchase and sale of land in Jrehind, so far as csuch sums are not 
defrayed out of the moneys received under such Act. 

(2) So much of the moneys carried to a separate account under this section as the 
Treasury consider are not, and are not likely to be, required to meet the above mentioned 
payments, shall from time to time be paid over and applied as part of the public revenues 
under the control of the Irish Government. 

XV. (1) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund in priority as men- 
tioned in this section — First, such portion of the sums' directed by this Act to be paid out 
of the moneys carried out to the Customs and Excise account in priority to any payment 
for the public revenues of Ireland as those moneys are insufficient to pay. Secondly, all 
sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the Government of Ireland, whether for inter- 
est, management, or Sinking Fund. Thirdly, all sums which at the passing of this Act are 
charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom in respect of Irish services 
other than the salary of the Lord Lieutenant. Fourthly, the salaries of all Judges of the 
Supreme Court of Judicature, or other superior court in Ireland, or of any county or other 
like court, who are appointed after the passing of this Act, and the pensions of such 
Judges. Fifthly, any other sums charged by this Act on the Irish Consolidated Fund. 

(2) It shall be the duty of the Legislature of Ireland to impose all such taxes, duties, 
or imposts as will raise a sufficient revenue to meet all sums charged for the time being on 
the Irish Consolidated Fund. 

XVI. Until all charges which are payable out of the Church property in Ireland and 
are guaranteed by the Treasury have been fully paid, the Irish Land Commission shall 
continue as heretofore to exist, with such commissioners and officers receiving such salaries 
as the Treasury may from time to time appoint, and to administer the Church property 
and apply the income and other moneys receivable therefrom, and so much of the salaries 
of such commissioners and officers and expenses of the office as is not paid out of the 
Church property shall be paid out of moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account 
under this act, and, if those moneys are insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund of Ire- 
land ; and if not so paid shall be paid out of moneys provided by Parliament as follows : 

(a) All charges on the Church property, for which a guarantee has been given by the 
Treasury before the passing of this Act, shall, so far as they are not paid out of such prop- 
erty, be paid out of the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account under this act ; 
and if such moneys are insufficient, the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, without prejudice, 
nevertheless, to the guarantee of the Treasury. 

{b) All charges on the Church property for which no guarantee has been given by the 
Treasury before the passing of this Act shall be charged on the Consolidated Fund of Ire- 
land, but shall not be guaranteed by the Treasury, nor charged on the Consolidated Fund 
of the United Kingdom. 

(2) Subject to any existing charges on the Church property, such property shall belong 
to the Irish Government, and any portion of the annual revenue thereof which the Treas- 
ury, on the application of the Irish Government, certify at the end of any financial year 
not to be required for meeting charges shall be paid over and applied as part of the public 

' revenues under the control of the Irish Government. 

(3) As soon as all charges on the property guaranteed by the Treasury have been paid, 
such property may be managed and administered and subject to existing charges thereon 
disposed of, and the income of proceeds thereof applied in such manner as the Irish Legis- 
ature may from time to time direct. 

(4) " Church property " in this section means all property accruing under the Irish 
Church Act, 1869, and transferred to the Irish Land Commission by the Irish Church Act 
Amendment, 1881. 

XVII. (1) All sums due for principal or interest to the Public Works Loan Commis- 
sioners or to the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland in respect of existing loans 
advanced on any security on Ireland shall, on and after the appointed day, be due to the 
Government of Ireland instead of the Commissioners ; and such body of persons as the 
Government of Ireland may appoint for the purpose shall have all the powers of the said 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 613 

Commissioners, or their secretary, for enforcing payment of such sums, and all securities 
for such sums, given to such Commissioners or their secretary, shall have effect as if the 
said body were therein substituted for those Commissioners or their secretary. 

(2) For the repayment of the said loans to the Consolidated Fund of the United King- 
dom the Irish Government shall pay annually into that Fund by half-yearly payments on 
the first day of January and the first day of July, or on such other days as may be agreed 
on, such installments of the principal of the said loans as will discharge all the loans 
within thirty years from the appointed day, and shall also pay interest half yearly on so 
much of the said principal as from time to time remains unpaid at the rate of three per 
cent, per annum ; and such installments of principal and interest shall be paid out of 
the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise accounts under this Act ; and if those are 
insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland. 

XVIII. If her Majesty declares that a state of war exists, and is pleased to signify 
such declaration to the Irish Legislative Body by speech or message, it shall be lawful for 
the Irish Legislature to appropriate a further sum out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland 
in aid of the army or navy, or other measures which her Majesty may take for the prosecu- 
tion of the war and defense of the realm, and to provide and raise money for such purpose ; 
and all moneys so provided and raised, whether by loan, taxation, or otherwise, shall be 
paid into the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. 

XIX. (1) It shall not be lawful for the Irish Legislative Body to adopt or pass any 
vote, resolution, address, or bill for the raising or appropriating for any purpose of any 
part of the public revenue of Ireland, or of any tax, duty, or impost, except in pursuance of 
a recommendation from her Majesty, signified through the Lord Lieutenant in the session 
in which such vote, resolution, address or bill is proposed. 

(2) Notwithstanding that the Irish Legislature is prohibited by this act from making 
laws relating to certain subjects, that Legislature may, with the assent of her Majesty 
in Council first obtained, appropriate any part of the Irish public revenue, or any tax, duty, 
or impost imposed by such Legislature, for the purpose of or in conjunction with such 
subjects. 

XX. (1) On and after the appointed day the Exchequer Division of the High Court 
of Justice shall continue to be a Court of Exchequer for Revenue purposes under this Act, 
and whenever any vacancy occurs in the office of any Judge of such Exchequer Division 
his successor shall be appointed by her Majesty, on the joint recommendation of the Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland and the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. 

(2) The Judges of such Exchequer Division appointed after the passing of this Act 
shall be removable only by her Majesty on address from the two Houses of the Imperial 
Parliament, and shall receive the same salaries and pensions as those payable at the passing 
of this Act to the existing Judges of Division unless, with the assent of her Majesty in Coun- 
cil first obtained, the Irish Legislature alters such salaries or pensions ; and such salaries 
and pensions shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account, 
in pursuance of this Act ; and if the same are insufficient, shall be paid out of the 
Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. 

(3) An alteration of any rules relating to the procedure in such legal proceedings as 
are mentioned in this section shall not be made except with the approval of the Lord 
High Chancellor of Great Britain ; and the sittings of the Exchequer Division and the 
Judges thereof shall be regulated with the like approval. 

(4) All legal proceedings instituted in Ireland by or against the Commissioners or any 
officers of Customs or Excise or the Treasury shall, if so required by any party to such 
proceedings, be heard and determined before the Judges of such Exchequer Division or 
some one of them ; and any appeal from the decision in any such legal proceeding, if by a 
Judge, shall lie to the said Division, and if by the Exchequer Division, shall lie to the 
House of Lords, and not to any other tribunal ; and if it is made to appear to such Judges, 
or any of them, that any decree or judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid has not 
been duly enforced by the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such 
Judges or Judge shall appoint some officer to enforce such judgment or decree ; and it 
shall be the duty of such officer to take proper steps to enforce the same, and for that pur- 
pose such officer and all persons employed by him shall be entitled to the same immuni- 
ties, power, and privileges as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers. 

(5) All sums recovered in respect of duties of Customs and Excise, or under any Act 
relating thereto, or by an officer of Customs or Excise, shall, notwithstanding anything in 
any other act, be paid to the Treasury and carried to Customs and Excise under this Act. 

POLICE. 

XXI. The following regulations shall be made with respect to the police in Ireland : 
(a) The Dublin Metropolitan Police shall continue to be subject, as heretofore, to the 

control of the Lord Lieutenant, as representing her Majesty, for a period of two years 
from the passing of this Act, and thereafter until any alteration is made by Act of the 
Legislature of Ireland ; but such Act shall provide for the proper saving of all their exist- 
ing interests, whether as regards pay, pensions, superannuation allowances, or otherwise. 
(/') The Royal Irish Constabulary shall, while that force subsists, continue and be 



6l4 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

subject, as heretofore, to the control of the Lord Lieutenant as representative of her 
Majesty. 

(c) The Irish Legislature may provide for the establishment and maintenance of a 
police force in counties and boroughs in Ireland under the control of local authorities ; and 
arrangement may be made between the Treasury and the Irish Government for the estab- 
lishment and maintenance of police reserves. 

SUPPLEMENTAL PROVISIONS. 

POWERS OF HER MAJESTY. 

XXII. On and after the appointed day there shall be reserved to her Majesty the 
power of erecting forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other buildings for military or 
naval purposes, the power of taking waste land, and on making due compensation, for any 
other land for the purpose of erecting such forts, magazines, and for other military or 
naval purposes for the defense of the realm. 

XXIII. If a bill or any provision of a bill is lost by disagreement between the two 
orders of the Legislative Body, and after a period ending with a dissolution of the Legis- 
lative Body, or the period of three years, whichever period is longest, such bill, or a bill 
containing the said provision, is again considered by the Legislative Body, and such bill or 
provision is adopted by the second order and negatived by the first order, the same shall be 
submitted to the whole Legislative Body, both bodies of which shall vote together on the 
bill or provision, and the same shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of 
the majority of the members so voting together. 

XXIV. On and after the day appointed Ireland shall cease, except in the event here- 
after in this Act mentioned, to return representative peers to the House of Lords, or mem- 
bers to the House of Commons ; and the persons who, on the said day, are such repre- 
sentative peers and members shall cease as such to be members of the House of Lords and 
House of Commons respectively. 

DECISION OF CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS. 

XXV. Questions arising as to the powers conferred on the Legislature of Ireland, under 
this Act, shall be determined as follows : (a) If any such question arises on any bill passed 
by the Legislative Body the Lord Lieutenant may refer such question to her Majesty in 
Council. (/') If in the course of any action or other legal proceeding such question arises 
on any Act of the Irish Legislature, any party to such action or other legal proceeding may, 
subject to the rules in this section mentioned, appeal from a decision on such question to her 
Majesty in Council, (c) If any such question arises otherwise than as aforesaid on any 
Act of the Irish Legislature, the Lord Lieutenant or one of her Majesty's principal 
Secretaries of State may refer such question to her Majesty in Council, (d) Any ques- 
tion referred or appeal brought under this section to her Majesty in Council shall be 
referred for the consideration of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, (e) The 
decision of her Majesty in Council on any question referred or appeal brought under this 
section shall be final ; and a bill which may be so decided to be or contain a provision in 
excess of the powets of the Irish Legislature shall not be assented to by the Lord Lieutenant, 
and a provision of any Act which is so decided to be in excess of the powers of the Irish Legis- 
lature shall be void. (/) There shall be added to the Judicial Committee when sitting for 
the purpose of considering questions under this section such members of her Majesty's 
Privy Council being or having been Irish Judges as to her Majesty may seem meet. 
{g) Her Majesty may by order in Council from time to time make rules as to the cases, 
and mode in which, and the conditions under which, in pursuance of this section, ques- 
tions may be referred and appeals brought to her Majesty in Council, and as to the con- 
sideration thereof by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ; and any rules so made 
shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in this Act. (h) An appeal shall not lie 
to the House of Lords in respect of any question in respect of which an appeal can be had to 
her Majesty in Council in pursuance of this section. 

THE LORD LIEUTENANT. 

XXVI. (i) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any Act of Parlia- 
ment, every subject of her Majesty shall be eligible to hold and enjoy the office of Lord 
Lieutenant in Ireland without reference to his religious belief. 

(2) The salary of the Lord Lieutenant shall continue to be charged on the Consoli- 
dated Fund of the United Kingdom, and the expenses of his household and establishment 
shall continue to be defrayed out of moneys to be provided by Parliament. 

(3) All existing powers vested by Act of Parliament or otherwise in the Chief Secretary 
for Ireland may, if no such officer is appointed, be exercised by the Lord Lieutenant until 
other provision is made by Act of the Irish Legislature. 

(4) The Legislature of Ireland shall not pass any Act relating to the office or functions 
of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 615 

JUDGES AND CIVIL SERVANTS. 

XXVII. A Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature or other Superior Court of 
Ireland, or of any County court, or other court with a like jurisdiction in Ireland, 
appointed after the passing of this Act, shall not be removed from his office except in 
pursuance of an address to her Majesty from both orders of the Legislative Body, voting 
separately, nor shall his salary be diminished or right to pension altered during his 
continuance in office. 

XXVIII. (1) All persons who, at the passing of this Act, are Judges of the Supreme 
Court of Judicature, or County Court Judges, or hold any other judicial position in Ire- 
land, shall, if they are removable at present on address to her Majesty of both Houses of 
Parliament, continue to be removable only upon such address from both Houses of the 
Imperial Parliament ; and if removable in any other manner shall continue to be remov- 
able in any other manner as heretofore ; and such persons, and also all persons at the pass- 
ing of this Act in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown in Ireland, whose salaries are 
charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, shall continue to hold office 
and to be entitled to the same salaries, pensions, and superannuation allowances as hereto- 
fore ; and to be liable to the same or analogous duties as heretofore ; and the salaries of 
such persons shall be paid out of the moneys carried out of the Customs and Excise account 
under this Act, or if these moneys are insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund ; 
and if the same are not so paid, shall continue charged on the Consolidated Fund of 
the United Kingdom. 

(2) If any of the said persons retire from office with the approbation of her Majesty 
before he has completed the period of service entitling him to a pension, it shall be lawful 
for her Majesty, if she thinks fit, to grant to that person such pension, not exceeding the 
pension to which he would have been entitled if he had completed the said period of 
service, as to her Majesty seems meet. 

XXIX. (1) All persons not above provided for, and at the passing of this Act serving 
in Ireland in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown, shall continue to hold their offices 
and receive the same salaries and be entitled to the same gratuities and superannuation 
allowances as heretofore, and shall be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore, or 
duties of similar rank ; but any of such persons shall be entitled at the expiration of two 
years after the passing of this Act to retire from office, and at any time, if required by the 
Irish Government, shall retire from office, and on such retirement shall be entitled to 
receive such payment as the Treasury may award to him, in accordance with the provisions 
contained in the 4th Schedule to this Act. 

(2) The amount of such payment shall be paid to him out of the moneys carried to 
the Customs and Excise account under this Act, or if those moneys are insufficient, out of 
the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far as the same are not so paid shall be paid out of 
moneys provided by Parliament. 

(3) The Pensions Commutation Act, 1871, shall apply to persons who, having retired, 
from office, are entitled to any annual payment under this section in like manner as if they 
had retired in consequence of the abolition of their offices. 

(4) This section shall not apply to persons who are retained in the service of the 
Imperial Government. 

XXX. Where before the passing of this Act any pension or superannuation allow- 
ance has been granted to any person on account of service as a Judge of the Supreme 
Court of Judicature of Ireland, or of any consolidated court, or as a County Court Judge, 
or in any other judicial position, or on account of service in the permanent Civil Ser- 
vice of the Crown in Ireland, otherwise than in some office, the holder of which is after 
the passing of this Act retained in the service of the Imperial Government, such pension 
or allowance, whether payable out of the Consolidated Fund or out of moneys provided by 
Parliament, shall continue to be paid to such person, and shall be so paid out of the 
moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, or if such moneys are 
insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far as the same is not so paid shall 
be paid as heretofore out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom or moneys 
provided by Parliament. 

XXXI. The provisions contained in the 5th Schedule to this Act relating to the mode 
in which arrangements are to be made for setting in motion the Irish Legislative Body and 
Government, and for the transfer to the Irish Government of the powers and duties to be 
transferred to them under this Act, or for otherwise bringing this Act into operation, shall 
be of the same effect as if they were enacted in the body of this Act. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

XXXII. Whenever an Act of the Legislature of Ireland has provided for carrying on 
the postal and telegraphic service with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams 
in Ireland, and the Post Office and other savings banks in Ireland for protecting the 
officers then in such service, and the existing depositors in such Post Office Savings Banks, 
the Treasury shall make arrangements for the transfer of the said service and banks in 



616 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

accordance with the said Act, and shall give public notice of the transfer and shall pay all 
depositors in such Post Office Savings Banks who request payment within six months after 
the date fixed for such transfer, and after the expiration of such six months the said 
depositors shall cease to have any claim against the Postmaster-General or the Consolidated 
Fund of the United Kingdom, but shall have the like claim against the Consolidated Fund 
of Ireland, and the Treasury shall cause to be transferred in accordance with the said Act 
securities representing the sums due to the said depositors in Post Office Savings Banks 
and the securities held for other savings banks. 

XXXIII. Save as otherwise provided by the Irish Legislature, (a) the existing law 
relating to the Exchequer and the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom shall apply to 
the Irish Exchequer and Consolidated Fund, and an officer shall from time to time be 
appointed by the Lord Lieutenant to fill the office of Comptroller-General of the receipts 
and issue of her Majesty's Exchequer and Auditor-General of public accounts so far as 
respects Ireland ; and (b) accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall be audited as 
appropriation accounts in the manner provided in the Exchequer and Audit Department 
Act, 1866, by or under the direction of the holder of such office. 

XXXIV. (1) The privileges, immunities, and powers to be held, enjoyed, and exer- 
cised by the Irish Legislative Body and the members thereof shall be such as are from 
time to time defined by Act of the Irish Legislature, but so that the same shall never 
exceed those at the passing of this Act held, enjoyed, and exercised by the House 
of Commons and by the members thereof. 

(2) Subject as in this Act mentioned, all existing laws and customs relating to the 
members of the House of Commons and their election, including the enactments respect- 
ing the questioning of elections, corrupt and illegal practices, and registration of electors, 
shall, so far as applicable, extend to elective members, the first order, and to members of 
the second of the Irish Legislative Body, provided that : 

(a) The law relating to the offices of profit enumerated in Schedule H to the Repre- 
sentation of the People Act, 1867, shall apply to such offices of profit in the Government 
of Ireland not exceeding ten. as the Legislature of Ireland may from time to time direct. 

(/') After the first dissolution of the Legislative Body the Legislature of Ireland may, 
subject to the restriction in this Act mentioned, alter the laws and customs in this section 
mentioned. 

XXXV. (1) The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland may make the regulations for the 
following purposes : 

(a) The summoning of the Legislative Body and the election of a Speaker, and such 
adaptation to the proceedings of the Legislative Body of the procedure of the House of 
Commons as appears to him expedient for facilitating the conduct of business by that 
body on their first meeting. 

(b) The adaptation of any law relating to the election of representative peers. 

(c) The adaptation of any laws and customs relating to the House of Commons or the 
members of the second order of the Legislative Body ; and 

(d) The mode of signifying their assent or election under this Act by representative 
peers or Irish members of the House of Commons as regards becoming members of the 
Irish Legislative Body in pursuance of this Act. 

(2) Any regulation so made shall, in so far as they concern the procedure of the 
Legislative Body, be subject to alteration by standing orders of that body, and so far as 
they concern other matters, be subject to alteration by the Legislature of Ireland, but 
shall, until alteration, have the same effect as if they were inserted in this Act. 

XXXVI. Save as in this Act provided with respect to matters to be decided by her 
Majesty in Council, nothing in this Act shall affect the appellate jurisdiction of the House 
of Lords in respect of actions and suits in Ireland, or the jurisdiction of the House of 
Lords to determine the claims to Irish peerages. 

XXXVII. Save as herein expressly provided, all matters in relation to which it is not 
competent for the Irish Legislative Body to make or repeal laws shall remain and be 
within the exclusive authority of the Imperial Parliament, save as aforesaid, whose power 
and authority in relation thereto shall in no wise be diminished or restrained by anything 
herein contained. 

XXXVIII. (1) Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all existing laws in force in 
Ireland, and all existing courts of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and all existing legal 
commissions, powers, and authorities, and all existing officers, judicial, administrative, and 
ministerial, and all existing taxes, licenses, and other duties, fees, and other receipts in Ire- 
land shall continue as if this Act had not been passed, subject nevertheless to be repealed, 
abolished, or altered in the manner and to the extent provided by this Act ; provided that 
subject to the provisions of this Act such taxes, duties, fees, and other receipts shall after 
the appointed day form part of the public revenues of Ireland. 

(2) The Commissioners of Inland Revenue, and the Commissioners 0/ Customs, and 
the officers of such Commissioners respectively shall have the same powers in relation to any 
articles subject to any duty of Excise or Customs manufactured, imported, kept for sale, 
or sold, and any premises where the same may be, and to any machinery, apparatus , vessels, 
Utensils, or conveyance used in connection therewith, or the removal thereof, and in rela- 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 617 

tion to the person manufacturing, importing, keeping for sale, selling, or having the 
custody or possession of the same, as they would have had if this Act had not been passed, 

XXXIX. (1) On and after the appointed day this Act should not, except such pro- 
visions thereof as are declared to be alterable by the Legislature of Ireland, be altered 
except 

(a) By Act of the Imperial Parliament, and with the consent of the Irish Legislative 
Body testified by an address to her Majesty ; or (b) by an Act of the Imperial Parliament 
for the passing of which there should be summoned to th; House of Lords the peerage 
members of the first order of the Irish Legislative Body, and if there are no such members, 
then twenty-eight Irish representative peers elected by the Irish peers in manner heretofore 
in use, subject to adaptation, as provided by this Act. And there shall be summoned to the 
House of Commons such one of the members of each constituency, or, in case of a consti- 
tuency returning four members, such two of those members, as the Legislative Body of 
Ireland may select, and such peers and members shall respectively be deemed for the 
purpose of passing any such Act to be members of the said Houses of Parliament 
respectively. 

(2) For the purpose of this section it shall be lawful for her Majesty, by order in 
Council, to make such provisions for summoning the said peers of Ireland to the House of 
Lords, and the said members from Ireland to the House of Commons, as to her Majesty 
may seem necessary or proper ; and any provisions contained in such order in Council 
shall have the same effect as if they had been enacted by Parliament. 

XL. In this Act the expression " the appointed day" shall mean such day after the 
thirty-first day of March, in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven, as may 
be determined by order of her Majesty in Council. The expression " Lord Lieutenant " 
includes the Lord Justices or any other chief governor or governors of Ireland for the time 
being. The expression "her Majesty the Queen," or " her Majesty," or "the Queen," 
includes the heirs and successors of her Majesty the Queen. The expression " Treasuiy " 
means the Commissioners of her Majesty's Treasury. The expression " treaty" includes 
any convention or arrangement. The expression "existing" means existing at the 
passing of this Act. The expression "existing constituency" means any county or 
borough, or division of a county or borough, or a university returning at the passing of 
this Act a member or members to serve in Parliament. The expression " duties of 
Excise " does not include a duty received in respect of any license whether for the sale of 
intoxicating liquors or otherwise. The expression "financial year" means the twelve 
months ending on the thirty-first day of March. 

XLI. This Act may be cited for all purposes as the Irish Government Act, 1886. 

Few among the most ardent supporters of the Bill cared to read it 
over ; its provisions were almost altogether unknown, as if they were 
immaterial. Strange to say that not only the Parliamentary Parnellites 
but other public men took it for granted it was a Home Rule Bill, with- 
out in any way studying the details of this most important measure for the 
future of their country. Tory hostility was the red rag that blinded their 
judgment by provoking their passions. 

The stupidity of the British Tories is proverbial. For once Ireland has 
reason to feel thankful for the inane bigotry of this stupid party. 

Editors of public journals in the United States wrote leading arti- 
cles praising Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill. As for the Parnellite 
organ, United Ireland, to say it was in spasmodic ecstacies of delight is to 
faintly describe the heroics of this remarkable Irish journal. All the 
Provincialist newspapers over the country were unstinted in their praise ; 
and if we lived in the days when heathen mythology was religion, Mr. 
Gladstone would have been deified, and enthroned in Olympus, like the 
Roman Emperors of old among the nation's gods. 

One eminent American newspaper, friendly disposed toward Irish 
aspirations as it understood them, and indeed as Irishmen publicly permit 
them to be taught, commented on the Bill from time to time with 
approval. In one of its editorials it stated that the forthcoming Irish 
Administration would have the self-same power and authority in Ireland 
which British Ministries enjoy in Great Britain. Imaginary Cabinets 
were printed in British and Irish papers, in all of which Mr. Parnell and 
his ablest lieutenants were appointed to power in the promised Irish 
Ministry. 

But to corroborate all these brilliant pictures, turning to the official 



618 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

document offered to British lawmakers by the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone 
as taken verbatim from the Bill, we read the provisions for the creation of 
this Irish Executive. 

"executive authority. 

" VII. (i) The Executive government of Ireland shall continue 
vested in Her Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on 
behalf of Her Majesty, with the aid of such officers and such councils as 
to Her Majesty may from time to time seem fit. 

" (2) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given, 
to Her Majesty, the Lord Lieutenant shall give or withold the assent of 
Her Majesty to bills passed by the Irish legislative body, and shall exer- 
cise the prerogatives of Her Majesty. 

"VIII. Her Majesty may by order in Council from time to time place 
under the control of the Irish Government for the purposes of the govern- 
ment any such land and buildings in Ireland as may be vested in or held 
in trust for Her Majesty." 

This is the only part of the Bill which defines the powers of the Execu- 
tive or Irish Government, on this important question. The rest of the- 
Bill is necessarily silent. This should corroborate Mr. Gladstone's speech 
describing this measure as the capital article creating an Irish responsible 
Ministry. 

What is the meaning of this ? It only means that Mr. Gladstone's- 
Home Rule Bill was a Coercion Bill. It means that the promised Irish 
Ministry resolve themselves into an irresponsible despot controlled alone by 
the elastic authority (so far as Irish interests are concerned) of the British 
Sovereign's Privy Council. This autocrat could, in as many minutes as it 
would take him to affix his signature, suspend the Habeas Corpus Act or 
proclaim martial law if he judged it necessary for the preservation of 
British power in Ireland ; free from all Parliamentary control whatever, 
for although he could prorogue the Irish Parliament at will, that body had 
no power — not the least — over his actions. And this man, Lord Lieutenant 
and Irish Government all in one, is Mr. Gladstone's idea of Home Rule, to 
quote his own words, perfectly acceptable and even desirable. 

Some writer has stated it is better to be good than great. In the 
face of Mr. Gladstone's extraordinary and unmerited popularity it does- 
not seem so. The public promise of a responsible ministry is not fulfilled 
in the four corners of this Bill. There is nothing surprising in the 
leader of the Holland deputation telling Mr. John Dillon that Mr. Glad- 
stone's conduct to the Boers was the blackest treachery known to history. 
Mr. Gladstone repeats himself to the Irish ; for no less a term can. 
faintly characterize the foul turpitude of this soft-spoken minister. 

The legislative powers given to the Irish Parliament were an insult to 
the Irish race. The whole measure can only be described as it is in the 
title to this chapter, A Foreign Rule Bill, a measure to more firmly rivet 
British shackles on Irish limbs. Men appeared so fascinated and stupe- 
fied by the treacherous charm of this Bill, that they freely presented them- 
selves to receive the foreigners' gyves. 

The Dublin Parliament not only would be deprived of all control 
over trade and navigation, but also over that much spoken of grievance, 
Irish land, and also the public purse. It was given the power of levying 
taxes, but in the same clause the British or Imperial taxes levied in Ire- 
land were removed from its legislative power. It had not the power to 
disburse or control one penny. So many were the exceptions of practical 
necessity, in the words of the master of skillful misrepresentation who 
created the Bill, that it might be asked what laws could this mock Parlia- 
ment pass ? 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 18S6. 619 

But the stupendous and crowning insult of all was the organization of 
the legislature, wherein the pro-British or Landlord and Orange rabid 
foes of Ireland would sit in the same chamber as the followers of Mr. 
Parnell. These hostile classes are termed in the Bill the First Order ; 
these gentlemen held a three-years veto power over every action of the 
legislature. 

Think of this power given to such men as Major Saunderson, Rev. 
Mr. Kane, Mr. Johnston of Ballykilbeg, and political firebrands of that 
school ! It is difficult to believe that it was not intended to make Irish 
Assemblies ridiculous before the world. A bear garden would be a haven 
of peace compared to the scenes that would occur in that powerless 
legislature. 

All the government patronage would lie in the hands of the irrespon- 
sible autocrat sarcastically termed the " Irish Government." Every office 
that drew any emoluments from the public treasury was in his gift. He 
was the lord and master of Ireland's destinies. 

The legislature could not appoint a Speaker without the consent of 
the First Order. 

To further illustrate their helplessness, it may be realized that if the 
landlords chose to repeat the horrors of Glenbeigh and Bodyke, this mock 
Parliament was not only powerless to introduce any measure of an 
agrarian nature, but could not even pass a vote of sympathy, but that it 
was liable to be vetoed by the First Order for three years. In this 
respect they had not even the power possessed at present by the Dublin 
Corporation. 

Thomas Davis, the great Irish patriot and founder in great part of the 
Young Ireland movement, seems to have had the gift of prophecy. In 
1843, in one of his admirable Irish essays, he seemed to foreshadow such a 
proposition coming to Ireland, called self-government. The dead patriot, 
writing on this subject, said : " A mockery of Irish independence is not 
what we want. The bauble of a powerless Parliament does not lure us. 
We are not children. The office of supplying England with recruits, arti- 
sans, and corn under the benign interposition of an Irish grand jury shall 
not be our destiny. By our deep conviction — by the power of mind over 
the people we say no ! 

" We are true to our color, ' the green,' and true to our watch-word, 
'Ireland for the Irish.' We want to win Ireland and keep it. If we win 
it, we will not lose it nor give it away to a bribing, a bullying, or a flatter- 
ing Minister." 

But what position will the Parnellites occupy in Irish estimation, when 
the noise of the present excitement has died away, and mankind can 
calmly see the situation ? Men, who have the audacity to style themselves 
Irish Nationalists, who speak of Emmet and Davis as if they held these 
dead patriots' godlike sentiments on independent Ireland. Some of 
these Irish followers of ex-Coercer Gladstone go to the grave to insult 
the memories of Ireland's sanctified martyrs, when they tell us that if 
Emmet or Davis were living they would be found their associates. To 
even repeat it appears an outrage on the glorious and pure-souled dead. 

If there were no other reasons for Irishmen to condemn these false 
agitations, which corrupt and destroy well-meaning men and turn them 
into renegades and traitors, the conduct of the Irish followers of this 
Whig Minister should be sufficient condemnation of all such pernicious 
movements. They not only accepted this insulting Bill, which would 
more closely fasten British chains around Irish manhood, but they act- 
ually had the bold effrontery to say that it would be a final settlement of 
the seven-centuries struggle for Irish freedom. One of Mr. Parnell's close 
friends said during the debate : " If the Irish people might be allowed 



620 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

to speak for themselves through their representatives he might say they 
were quite satisfied with the Bill and regarded it as a final settlement of the 
question." 

What foul, black, and unnatural treason ! For the first time since the 
Norman invasion Britain could claim a legal right to Ireland, sanctioned 
by the votes of her delegates freely elected, if this infamous Foreign 
Rule Bill had become law. A final settlement of the question it would 
have indeed been, for Ireland would have required no other measure of 
law from her invader. 

Even as it is, the poison which this " legal agitation " has impregnated 
into the nation has her sick unto death. Justin McCarthy on May 2, 
1886, one month before the second reading of the bill, said : 

" My forecast, then, is this — Mr. Gladstone's measure will not pass this 
session, will not pass any session, in its present shape. But all the same, 
Mr. Gladstone has already carried Home Rule. No Parliament will 
ever again attempt to carry on the imperial business until it has settled 
the Home Rule question." 

Irish Parliamentarians are not too difficult to please ; unfortunately for 
Ireland their prophecies do not always come true. In the course of this de- 
bate Mr. Parnell, who seemed eager to accept this fraudulent measure, was 
twitted about a passage in a Cincinnati speech ; the exact words were found 
and cabled over next day. These were the sentiments then expressed : 
" Not one of us will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which 
keeps Ireland bound to England." Mr. Goschen, an ex-Liberal, but who 
has gone over altogether to the Tories, delivered this speech previous to 
the division on the bill ; he said : 

" It has been shown that the British Parliament is not inclined to con- 
sider Mr. Parnell its dictator. [Loud cheers.] During the recess I heard 
one, now a Minister of the Crown, say he was certain that Mr. Parnell 
would be dictator in the coming session. I think that Mr. Parnell's fol- 
lowers will now acknowledge that there are limits whereat they see many 
who are prepared to grant some legislative autonomy to Ireland would 
draw the line. The House will remember the first reading of this bill and 
will recall the Right Honorable Chief Secretary for Ireland's repeated 
allusions to certain dark subterranean forces. We do not fear so much 
thereof now. They have withdrawn to a great extent, though not entirely 
from the light. The curtain has been dropped over those terrible times 
and tragedies which have scarcely faded from our memories. The 
alarmed Home Secretary of the Premier's last government is now able 
to reappear as Chancellor of the Exchequer with great jocularity and 
light-heartedness to make merry over what he calls the melodramatic 
turns. 

" I wonder whether this began on the day when he first pinned on his 
arm over the Ministerial uniform the Home Rule badge of the Parnellites 
to wear. [Loud Opposition cheers.] We know that a truce has been pro- 
claimed and that a part of the dark subterranean forces has been told 
off to terrify British public opinion. They are simply holding their hands, 
though. The devil is still working in some parts of Ireland." [Cheers.] 

Mr. Parnell followed Mr. Goschen, and his speech reads with strange 
interest after studying Mr. Gladstone's bill. 

"We have had this measure accepted by a?l leaders in every section of 
national feeling in Ireland ; also outside of Ireland, in America, and in 
every country where Irish people are found. [Cheers.] We have not 
heard a single voice raised against the bill by an Irishman. [Cheers, and 
cries of " Oh ! "] Certainly not by any Irishman of the National party. 

" Even the terrible Irish World, a newspaper which has not been on 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 18S5 AND 1886. 621 

my side for the last five or six years, says that the Irish race at home and 
abroad has signified its willingness to accept the terms of peace offered by 
Mr. Gladstone. [Cheers.] 

" I say that as far as the Irish people can accept this bill they have 
accepted it without any reserve as a measure which may be considered the 
final settlement of this great question." 

The more one plunges into the maze that these Provincialists would 
lead Ireland through, fresh and startling surprises beset our path. Here 
is a man of education and ability who cannot possibly have any love for 
England. He has succeeded up to the present in deceiving the Irish 
people ; he has actually mesmerized them. Whatever devilish power 
this British Parliament gives to Irishmen it not only destroys them, 
soul and intellect, by its wizard influence, but it makes them the terrible 
medium of casting a soporific influence over their race. This young man 
started out in the morning of public life with high hopes thrown around 
him ; he had energy and ability, and what appeared an unconquerable 
determination never to yield or surrender to Britain unless on his own 
terms — absolute self-government for Ireland. And now he has thrown 
away his gage of war, surrenders all his public vows, for a foreign bill which 
can only bring coercion and chains to Ireland. He beseeches the Britons 
in that chamber to vote the second reading in the most abject and 
whining terms on the strength of his promise that this bill would be 
accepted by the Irish people as a final settlement of the outstanding 
quarrel of seven centuries. Think of his own words uttered a short time 
previous ; think of these sentences in his Liverpool speech, where he 
distinctly states: "I believe a halting and inefficient measure would be 
fatal to the interests of both England and Ireland " ; and a little before 
this sentence he informs us that " nothing in the world would induce him 
to accept on behalf of the Irish people anything but the fullest and com- 
pletest control over our own affairs." And with these words almost hot 
upon his lips he publicly makes this statement in Parliament on the 
second reading of a measure falsely labeled Home Rule, a measure 
which he had not the courage to criticise. Irishmen will note that from 
the day Mr. Gladstone produced his bill until the present hour not 
one of these so-called public leaders dared come before the world to 
point out a single blessing or benefit its provisions would confer upon 
Ireland. They have been challenged to defend their conduct, which 
must be characterized as treason to the cause of Ireland, by not denouncing 
and exposing this insulting measure of the British Premier. Whatever 
differences of opinion there may exist in the minds of the moderate Irish 
Provincialists as to the proper methods by which self-government can be 
procured, upon this bill there can be no differences ; it is printed here in 
its entirety ; and within living recollection of Irish dealings with Britain, 
or any authorities that can be read, no one can cite an instance of any- 
thing with so misleading a title. Within the four corners of this bill 
there is not one concession or surrender of control to the Irish 
people. On the contrary, as pointed out, it conserves and concentrates 
foreign control in the person of a single despot. What motives induced 
the stupid and bigoted Tories and their allies the " Unionists " to reject 
this measure we know not. But the people have not fallen so low in 
intelligence that the stupid blunders of a stupid party form sufficient 
guide to point the path which they should take on their road to freedom. 
The bill was rejected by 30 votes in a rather full House, 311 voting for 
the measure and 340 against ; 94 Radicals, filled with short-sighted 
prejudice, changed sides, deserting their leader and voting with the 
Tories — anything to strike down the Irish. It appears that both sides 
fought this battle out filled with narrow-minded bigotry of each other, 



622 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and that the merits of the bill, or the details of the bill, guided neither 
party. For Ireland's honor it was a fortunate escape. It is said that the 
superior beings who look down upon this world pity the silly struggles 
and strivings which mortals engage in for either a worthless object or 
some momentary pleasure. It needed no superior spirit to have viewed 
the earnestness, passions, and exertions of the various groups in that 
Commons chamber in London to have shrugged his shoulders with a 
sense of degradation and shame that these are the great leaders of 
thought ; what a small petty thing is such humanity at its best, and if 
it is so in the green wood what must it be in the dry ? The Government, 
confident that they could succeed by an appeal to the country, determined 
to dissolve Parliament and have another general election on the merits 
of the question. But before doing so they had certain necessary 
measures to pass into law. It came to pass during this short-lived 
Gladstone administration that a famine was raging in certain districts in 
Ireland. Mr. Davitt, acting as the almoner of the generous Irish- 
American and American public, was distributing these alms, as already 
stated. In the interesting letters forwarded to the Irish World by Mr. 
Davitt he points out what a lowering and degrading effect this alms- 
giving has upon the Irish people. The small farmer class, whose normal 
condition is semi-poverty and bare subsistence, in many cases sought 
and procured a portion of these American alms, thereby in many cases de- 
priving the absolutely famine stricken of their portion. What a dreadful 
curse poverty is upon any people ; this almsgiving, which is a dreadful 
and painful necessity, has a tendency to make paupers of the people. 
At this time there were numerous evictions, aided by the armed forces 
of the British Crown. Mr. Davitt witnessed some of these, and in one 
of his letters exclaimed, as if wrung from the bitter anguish of his 
heart, that these evictions were taking place under a Gladstone Home 
Rule Government and with a John Morley for Irish Chief Secretary. 
But it was so ; the work of depopulating the country never ceases. No 
change in the British Ministry can affect this drain. And the old cry 
of the London Times in '48 can be slightly altered to suit the present 
condition of Ireland. The Celts are going with a vengeance. Before 
Mr. Gladstone dissolved Parliament his Irish Coercion Bill became law. 
The ideal Gladstone, as recently depicted, is the very opposite to the 
real man. 

On May 20 the " Peace Preservation " (Ireland) Act was read a 
second time ; it was the renewal of the Arms Bill, which deprived the 
Irish people (or was supposed to do so as far as British law could be 
enforced) of having or knowing the use of arms. This Government, 
which posed before the world as a " Home Rule" administration, and 
which received the full Irish vote, all the Parnellites joining its ranks, 
introduced and passed into law a coercion measure, with which they 
would not dare insult Britain. And yet this Ministry and their Parnellite 
allies had the audacity to tell Irishmen they were going to give them 
the government of their country. This bill permitted the police in 
Ireland under British rule to enter the home of any Irishman they chose 
at any hour to search for arms. During the short term of six months 
that this " Home Rule " Ministry governed Ireland Mr. John Morley 
aided the landlords with the forces of the Crown to tear down the humble 
homes and dismantle the roof-trees of 10,848 people, who were evicted 
during the period that Lord Aberdeen was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 
So corrupt has been the teaching of the people that the Dublin trades 
turned out to escort off this evictor of near 11,000 people, and Irish 
Americans received him at dinner and receptions when he came to 
this country. Parliament was dissolved shortly after the passing of the 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 623 

Irish Coercion Bill, and the Home Rule issue was put to the English 
people. 

In Ireland of course the elections were about the same, but in Eng- 
land it was to be learned by a fair and honest test the truth or falsehood 
of the statements so persistently made by Irish leaders of the sympathy of 
the English working classes with Irish aspirations. A most silly and 
injurious doctrine to spread among Irishmen ; as well tell the Alsatian 
workingman that the German artisan is in favor of his being restored 
to France. Even this would be more probable, for there are no such 
clashing interests as exist between the British and Irish workingman. 
Mr. Gladstone termed the election an issue between the classes and 
the masses : there could be no such issue between two nations. Had 
Ireland a manufacturing class they would be hostile to the British 
manufacturing class, but as she has not, they want to create them from 
the Irish people. There are men who dream of a noble ideal called 
the millennium — but the Great Creator has made mankind different in 
race, language, and ideas, and until the doctrine of nationalities is 
swept away this universal cry of the masses and classes will be always 
Utopian when applied to the peoples of different nations. When applied 
in Britain under a British Government, or if applied in Ireland under 
an Irish republic, there would be some meaning, although there might 
be questionable judgment, in the cry. The nobles of different nation- 
alities, the aristocrats of Europe, have no such common interests. They 
meet in the social circle with the pleasure of cultivated, traveled intel- 
lects. Still they rush to war on each other for the common bond of nation- 
ality which unites themselves and the wage earners of their nation. 
Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, up to the cannon's mouth they march 
together, aristocrat and democrat, for the honor of their flag and the 
glory of their fatherland. 

The English election of 1886 ought to be an instructive lesson to 
Irishmen who are carried away with this idea of English workingmen's sym- 
pathy. That there are many sincere and ardent believers in honest Irish 
Home Rule among Englishmen is not to be questioned, but they do not 
amount to any number of sufficient importance to affect the issue and 
never possibly can. Irishmen who have had ample opportunities of study- 
ing this question in Radical clubs where their nationality was not dreamt 
of understand this fully. The electors who voted apparently in favor of 
Irish Home Rule really voted for their idol Gladstone, whom nothing 
could shake in their estimation :' it was simply blind, unreasoning devo- 
tion, such as animates the masses of most peoples. If Mr. Gladstone 
veered round and denounced Home Rule under the influence of some 
other motive they would vote for him all the same. Look at the election 
returns of the previous year, where Mr. Gladstone and the Irish were 
directly hostile, and yet Britain rolled up the immense majority of 83 in 
his favor in spite of all the powers of the highly and perfectly organized 
Irish vote. The results of the general election of 1886 were as follows : 
Conservatives, 316 ; Unionists, 77 ; Liberals, 191 ; Parnellites, 86. 

These figures show a falling off of sixty-five votes in the united poll- 
ing of the Liberal party from the previous election, and their union with 
the Irish lost them these English workingmen's votes, which they received 
when directly opposed to the Irish workingman. But then the Unionists 
were and are more bitterly hostile to Irish " Home Rule " than even the 
Tories ; so that their votes count in here as the record of the same senti- 
ment ; which makes a total of 142 workingmen's constituencies (that is, 
as Liberal constituencies are counted by the Irish Provincialist agitators) 
who changed sides on the Irish Home Rule question, for no other issue 
disturbed the British mind : nearly one-half of Mr. Gladstone's following 



624 THE I RI SH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

deserted him. And these Irish Provincialists boast about the English 
democracy, because, forsooth, 191 constituencies remained faithful to 
their idol the " Grand Old Man." The mischief these men are doing in 
Ireland is incalculable when they preach to the people, who have no other 
sources of information, this misleading theory of the English democracy. 
A writer during this election speaks of the workingman's vote thus : 

" The workingmen of Finsbury, St. Pancras, Tower Hill, Southwark, 
Preston, Clapham, Fulham, Dudley, Mile End, and Chester, all work- 
ingmen's constituencies, voted against Irish Home Rule. The last- 
named place, Chester, is the more remarkable because at the last general 
election their votes were 3000 for Gladstone and only 66 against. 
Dudley is one of the instructive incidents of the election, a town of 
Worcestershire, with a population of 100,000. Mr. H. S. Sheridan has 
been its member for thirty years, less some months. Last November, as 
a Liberal, he polled over 6000 votes, and was elected by a majority 
exceeding 1000. This week he stood as a Gladstonian Home Ruler ; 
his vote was cut down to 4500, and his Conservative opponent of last 
year, Mr. Brooke Robinson, beat him by 1930 majority. And yet 
Dudley is not inhabited by dukes or earls, nor even by rich and idle 
commoners living on their money. It is a community of artisans work- 
ing in iron. They make nails, chain, cables, grates, and there are glass 
factories as well. Not much chance for classes here, one would think, 
and yet a Liberal majority of 1156 has been converted into a Conserva- 
tive majority of 1930. Will Mr. Gladstone explain ? 

" Or will he explain West Ham ? This nottoo euphonious name covers 
the metropolitan constituencies West Ham North and West Ham South, 
and they may be called a felicitous example of the political nomenclature 
adopted in the Redistribution Bill. West Ham is well described as a 
huge colony of workingmen, in which the classes are represented by little 
more than the clergymen who labor among them. Last November the 
borough was altogether Liberal — sent two Liberals into the House of 
Commons by good majorities. It now turns round and sends two Conser- 
vatives. Mr. Cook, who won it as a Liberal by 719, is beaten as a Home 
Ruler by 727. Mr Leicester, who won it as a Liberal by 1000, loses it 
as a Home Ruler by 306, and Mr. Leicester is himself one of those horny- 
handed sons of toil in whose name he and Mr. Joseph Arch jointly 
appealed to other horny-handed sons of toil — the phrase is theirs, not 
mine — to vote down Lord Salisbury." 

Another writer speaks thus of this general election : 

" The contest in England, in which we see the Radical vote has been 
transferred to its enemy the Tory, is not reassuring, and it will not be 
easily forgotten that for the first time since the passing of the Reform 
Act of '32 Birmingham, the pulse of the caucus and the Mecca of Radi- 
calism, has returned a Tory rather than support Gladstone's moderate 
measure of justice to Ireland. Your British Radicalism, that section of 
it which we always thought the truest and best, and which has Mr. 
Chamberlain as its god and master, is as hollow a mockery as anything 
that exists between Land's End and John o' Groat's. 

" I am here tempted to quote ad rem from a private letter which I 
received last night from a prominent member of the Irish party who has 
been stumping England for the Ministerialists. ' From what I have seen 
it is evident we shall lose this time. I have been told that many of the 
Liberals who declare themselves against Gladstone now say they will sup- 
port a Unionist, on the ground that the Home Rule question has been 
sprung too suddenly on the country. Still those who oppose the Grand 
Old Man for this reason now express their belief that Home Rule is inev- 
itable and declare they will support Gladstone next time. Wonderful are 



GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1885 AND 1886. 625 

the ways of the Saxon ! I have always hated them pretty well, but never 
with the same intensity as I do to-day. The more I see of them and the 
better I know them the less favorably I regard them. ■ Those for us as 
well as our opponents are a bad lot. Again, one of the ablest and most 
influential members of the Protestant Home Rule Association said in 
conversation the other evening that while he hoped he was an earnest and 
disinterested Nationalist, he vowed he had been driven into active politics 
by his unadulterated hate of the average Englishman. He has traveled 
a good deal, and he says in no part of the world where he met an Eng- 
lishman has he not been compelled by the offensive allusions he heard to 
Ireland and the Irish people to defend himself and his countrymen as 
if they were a nation of cutthroats and thugs." 

It is the experience of every traveled Irishman, even here in the United 
States, that the Englishman is grossly offensive and aggressive in his attacks 
upon the Irish people. Can Irishmen ever be united by any federal tie 
or link of the Crown to this hostile race ? Never ! They will never consent 
to give Ireland a separate autonomy peacefully. Let Irishmen, then, bend 
all their energies toward the great goal of national independence. What 
George Washington said of a federal tie between these United States 
and Britain when such a subject was broached during the Revolutionary 
War is applicable to Ireland, an ancient nation, and comes with tenfold 
the weight of argument : " Nothing short of independence, it appears to 
me, can possibly do. A peace on other terms would, if I may be allowed 
the expression.be a peace of war. The injuries we have received from 
the British nation were so unprovoked, and have been so great and so 
many, that they can never be forgotten. Besides the feuds, the jealousies, 
the animosities that would ever attend a union with them, besides the 
importance of the advantages which we should derive from an unrestricted 
commerce, our fidelity as a people, our gratitude, our character as men, are 
opposed to a coalition with them as subjects." 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

(1886-87.) 

BALFOURISM AND CRIME TORY COERCION REGIME — MITCHELSTOWN 

MURDERS — CONCLUSION. 

Irish Agitators Try to Cheer their Countrymen — Justin McCarthy — No Coercion — Liberal 
Banquet to Parnell — Parnell's Speech — " Out of Gratitude to the Liberals Irishmen 
Cease to Commit Crime " — Evictions — Bodyke — Arrest of Women and Boys — 
Coolgreany Victims — Effect of " Rational Resistance " — Irish Peasants Attacked with 
Emergency Hatchets — Their Weapons Limewater and Stirabout — Disgraceful and 
Cowardly Teachings — Reduction of Rent Misleading — Greater Reduction in Price of 
Produce — Eviction Statistics : Before the Land League Era — Since its Creation — 
Ireland's Pressing Need — Industries — Britain as a Great Power — Her Small Army — 
Her Braggadocio — The Saturday Review on Britain's Weakness — Irish Members not 
to go to Parliament — Journal de St. Petersbourgs Article on Russia and Ireland — 
Mattathias to the Maccabees — Judas Maccabee — Gird Yourselves and be Valiant Men 
— Mitchelstown Murders — Scene before the Platform — Charge of the Constabulary — 
Retreat for Arms — Opening Fire from the Barracks — The Murdered Men — Irish 
Peasant Steeps his Handkerchief in the Blood of his Murdered Countrymen — Hatred 
to English Rule — Lessons from these British Murders — Propagandism of Nationality 
and Active Work — Conclusion. 

The result of the general election was the return of the Tories to 
power. This time with a distinct mandate given by the British working- 
man : " Hold Ireland by force ! Coerce her as you will. We the democ- 
racy of Britain indorse your proceedings by our votes ! " 

The people of England are undoubtedly responsible for Irish mis- 
government, and Ireland's war is with the people of England. They created 
the present coercion government and its predecessors. By their votes 
they repeat the words used eighteen centuries ago. Speaking to the 
Irish they exclaim : " Their blood be upon our heads a?id upon our children." 
It is for Irishmen to reflect upon the nature of this sanguinary determina- 
tion of these foreign usurpers in Ireland. 

The murder at Youghal, the murders at Mitchelstown and all the 
recent horrors, are the result directly of the recent election in England. 
It is the English masses who created Irish tyrants ; with them rest the 
guilt and responsibility. They were asked to let Ireland go in peace. 
But by their votes they fiercely answered : No ! Coerce these 
Irish ! 

The Provincialists, many of them interested in the continuance of their 
public movement, feared their countrymen would become disheartened 
and might begin to think for themselves and question the wisdom of this 
legal and moral agitation. They were busy trying to cheer the drooping 
spirits of the faint-hearted, and particularly impressed upon them that 
there would be no coercion. Not that this bugbear amounts to anything ; 
Ireland's normal condition is the infamous coercion of foreign rule. Mr. 
Justin McCarthy speaking on this theme at that time said : 

" People in their drawing rooms talk of coercion, but people in Cabinet 
councils know better than to talk or think of anything of the kind. A 
great majority of the Liberal secessionists are pledged as deeply against 
coercion as the Gladstonians, or, for the matter of that, as the Nationalists 
themselves. A Salisbury Ministry would be pitched out at once if they tried 

626 



BALFOURISM AND CRIME. 627 

any policy of coercion in Ire/and. They will not try anything of the kind. 
They will endeavor to tide over the next session with some sort of land 
scheme, and if they remain in office until the following season they will 
by that time have educated the party, and go in for Home Rule." 

With what an assumed air of knowledge do these Provincialists try to 
prophesy and mislead their duped, deceived, and betrayed countrymen. 
How ridiculous and contemptible are their attempts to forecast the future. 
There is the vice-president of the agitators telling his people that the 
Tories will not — nay, more — dare not, or they would be "pitched out" 
bring in coercion, and his prophecy has been realized in a permanent 
coercion act ; that they will go in for Home Rule, and the British 
answered him by the blood of Mitchelstown. And yet, in the face of all 
these facts giving the lie to their statements, a portion of the Irish 
infatuated masses cheer and idolize these mockers at Irish aspirations. 
The people are taught false doctrine, and the truth — God's pure and 
sacred truth — is kept, from them. There is a conspiracy among these 
bogus Nationalists to misrepresent and stifle the words of true patriotism 
that they may not reach the people. How can Irishmen expect more noble 
actions than these prophecies forecast ? You cannot expect the owl to 
have the grand sweep and piercing vision of the eagle. The jackal has 
not the majesty or dignity of the lion. What have these miserable 
politicians to do with the grand and sublime patriotism that aspires to 
national independence? Grovelers in the mire of the enemy's political 
squabbles and party politics, their eyes cannot pierce the vaporous 
blackness that enshrouds them in its inky pall. They cannot soar to the 
mountain cliffs of Patriotism, where the pure air of Liberty is breathed 
by the immortals who dare all for fatherland. They are incapable of 
feeling the spirit of self-sacrificing patriotism that belongs to the golden 
age of history. The blade that slew Mincovitti or the sword of Har- 
modius would set their craven spirits as panic stricken as did the steel of 
the Phoenix Park. Who would place these men near such godlike man- 
hood as Leonidas, William Tell, Kosciusko, George Washington, Arnold 
von Winkelried, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Robert Emmet, or the immortal 
Irishman Theobald Wolfe Tone, a man who dared for Ireland what this 
galaxy of immortal patriots did for the sacred name of country and 
Liberty ? To dare the risks, to face the terrific odds, to unceasingly 
battle with the foe as did these deathless patriots, is undreamt of by these 
•dwellers among British politicians in the very nest of tyranny, associates 
and wordy disputers with the assassins of their race. They tell their 
duped people, whom they have deceived by falsehood and illusive hopes, 
that Ireland's robbers will do for her what the heroes of history did for 
the sacred fire of Liberty which they kept burning until it was quenched 
in their life blood, or until Victory blessed their banners. What an 
■excuse for dastard cowardism ! They unceasingly prate of British inter- 
nal politics and the chances of an English election, while wailing, sorrow, 
and eviction stalk over their own island. Think of these poor dead 
women in Geashill, dead of starvation, and then think of all the sums sent 
these men from this country ; if they did not know of these women's 
needs in time they should have. Where was the peaceful organization at 
the dreadful approach of these famine deaths ? Talking inane gabble 
which they call nationality. What is it to the plundered Irish which of 
the enemy's robber bands is in power ? whether their foreign assassins 
are styled Tories or Liberals or Unionists ? They are alike in infamy, 
alike in their trail of blood over the island. They are the same invading 
British who came to the Green Isle to destroy its beauty and to perpe- 
trate murder and arson over the fair face of the land. Who can distin- 
guish them ? Their hands are red with the blood of the people, their 



628 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

garments have the stench of butchery, and the atmosphere is reeking with 
the horrors of their vile presence. Morley or Balfour, Churchill or 
Chamberlain, Gladstone or Salisbury, they are all alike ministers of the 
most hideous system of massacre and plunder that has desecrated God's 
eartli since sin first stained man's purity. 

The Tories finished the short session of 1886 without asking for any 
additional powers of coercion for Ireland. These so-called laws are a part 
of that vile hypocrisy which Ireland's destroyers practice. They have 
absolute power with or without these measures, and hirelings drunk with 
blood, to carry out the most infamous atrocity on the people, and courts 
that mock justice with the brutalities they practice under the name of 
what they term law. In the session of 1887 they passed a per7nanejit 
coercion law with provisions enough in the bill to enmesh in its villainous 
seines the Irishman who would breathe a hostile breath against the rule 
of the British banditti. And these are the fruits of this mountain of folly 
and delusion, which has led the people astray from the path of freedom 
trodden by other enslaved nations — this crime of trying to compromise 
with felons which commenced with O'Connell and now lives in decrepi- 
tude under Parnell. Its laurels are a permanent act of coercion for 
these inspectors of the robbers' law to bow down to, or else to shriek and 
howl against. 

The British Liberals gave a banquet in honor of the Irish party's 
having merged into their ranks ; they received with honors the man who 
now desecrates the name of Charles Stewart Parnell. The English 
drank the health of their sovereign, joined in the toast by their Irish 
guest. Did Charles Stewart Parnell see gouts of blood in the wine when 
he raised to his lips the glass in honor of that throne which rests on the 
skulls of its murdered victims, as written by his noble-hearted dead sister 
in her exquisite poem on the Belmullet massacre? Did her bones rattle 
in the cerements of the grave when the man who bears her brother's 
name sat down to partake of the hospitality of Ellen McDonagh's 
assassins ? 

The British, always eager to welcome Irish renegades to their ranks, 
drank with honors and profuse compliments the health of their new 
adherent. Did there glimmer on the walls of that banquet hall words 
spoken in loyal and patriotic Wexford, where Ireland's '98 war for inde- 
pendence had birth : " Englishmen may speak a kind word of me when 
I am dead " ? The man who misrepresented the speaker of these words in 
Wexford arose to respond to his new allies' toast. And quite in keeping 
with his associates and change of front, he grossly insulted his country- 
men in his speech. During the course of his remarks he used these 
words : " The diminution of crime showed the gratitude of the Irish 
toward the Liberals." In the name of an outraged, deceived, and 
betrayed nation, for what did Ireland's sons owe gratitude to these Liberals ? 
Was it for making the land ring with the shrieks of the wounded and the 
dying ? Was it for massacre and persecution ? Was it for manufacturing 
the most demoniac perjury ever created by demons ? Was it for murder- 
ing Irishmen by the gibbet ? All these crimes Mr. Parnell accused them 
off. Was it for Morley's eleven thousand victims of eviction ? Was it 
for these Liberals' Coercion Act disarming his people that this man spoke 
of Irish gratitude, or did he mean the contemptuous and audacious insult 
hurled in the face of Ireland when Mr. Gladstone gave to the world a 
bill to more firmly chain Ireland in British manacles, called out of 
derision Home Rule ? He who bore an honored name, which its present 
wearer is burying in the dregs of degradation, told these British persecu- 
tors of Ireland that Irishmen were criminals, and that they stopped their 
crimes out of gratitude to them. 



BALFOURISM AND CRIME. 629 

The evictions of 1 886 continued through the winter. The British fiends 
reveled in the luxury of wanton cruelties. To the evictions in Glenbeigh 
were superadded the horrors of burning cabins. The unhappy people 
saw the fire lap around the blazing roof-trees of their humble homes, and 
the glare of the conflagration lit up the valley, and reflected from the 
steel points of the bayonets raised aloft in the hands of Britain's butchers, 
ready to drink in the life gore of fresh victims at the slightest show of 
opposition. Where, then, was Ireland's manhood clothed in the justice of 
her cause, and the god-given sacred duty of self-defense, to smite the 
fountain of infamy that caused these crimes? Not to strike the mere 
hirelings alone, but the brain that conceived and permitted this deviltry — 
to slay him as the pure-souled patriots struck down Britain's robber chief- 
tain in the Phoenix Park. Alas for Irish freedom and Irish manhood ! 
those who would dare all for their suffering motherland were compelled 
to remain inert while the wave of folly and false teaching was passing 
over their agonized land. 

True, there were Provincialists at these evictions who presented flowers 
and consoling words to the unhappy victims — flowers and kind words to 
a dying people — but no words calling on them to suppress, to destroy, these 
assassins, and drive them as other reptiles were driven from the island. 
They bade them be of cheer, for soon their hopes would be realized and 
smiling peace would dawn upon this war-stricken nation. Who were 
they that were supposed to bring this blessed peace ? They were the men 
whose hands were dripping with the blood of the Belmullet and Ballina 
massacres, the butchers of women and helpless children, the suborners of 
perjury, the kidnappers of delicate women, the men who buried their vic- 
tims out of sight that they would not rise up in bloody witness against 
them, the merciless, hypocritical, and brutal Liberal assassins of England. 
Oh, land of mountain, stream, and valley, clothed with the verdure and 
beauty of God's glorious garments, how often have your pure rills been 
stained with the blood of your children, your grassy slopes and towering 
mountain sides bathed in the heart current of your dying sons. And here 
in the clear light of day, under the canopy of heaven, with the glorious sun 
smiling down upon this stricken yet beautiful island, men harangue the 
people in the very face of the evictor, and deceive their bleeding country- 
men with the false promise that another nest of foreign assassins will 
bring consolation to the bosom of an afflicted nation. 

The horrors of Glenbeigh were succeeded by the cruelties and agonies 
of Bodyke. Under the teachings and guidance of these agitators the 
people were instructed to barricade their cabins and build fences and dig 
intrenchments to offer what they called " rational resistance " to the 
enemy's evictors. What were the weapons these poor people were 
advised to use against the armed foe ? They attempted opposition by 
flinging cans of " boiling water mixed with lime, oatmeal, and other dele- 
terious substances," as charged against some prisoners captured by the 
enemy. Who were these prisoners ? Thirty women and little girls, 
eleven old men and boys. God help our people ! Has this delusive agita- 
tion reduced them to the humiliation of women and girls trying to fight 
the armed minions of Britain ? 

Take this scene from the Coolgreany evictions, one of the many scenes 
where the invader carried war and extermination among an unarmed 
(and by the agitators a disarmed) people : 

" The garrison consisted of six men — Pat Grennell, the owner, 
Thomas and Joe Grennell, his brothers, and John O'Neil, a blacksmith 
who suffered eviction himself on a previous occasion, Thomas Boulger, 
and Peter Gibson. 

" The Emergency Men descended one by one through the aperture 



630 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

in the roof. They had axes in their hands, and the cry arose from the 
startled people, ' They have hatchets ! they have hatchets ! ' A moment 
of suspense followed and a few police with difficulty climbed on the roof. 
Before they were able to enter the house one of the garrison, Peter Gib- 
son, was thrust forth bleeding from the face. Tom Boulger after a fierce 
struggle with these desperadoes into whose hands he had fallen was also 
ejected through the narrow hole. He was besmeared with blood, the 
result of the struggle which took place in the darkness inside, where the 
Emergency Men must have seriously beaten the occupants. Thomas 
Grennell was thrust out next. He also bore the marks of the brutal 
violence of his assailants. The blood poured from a wound in the head. 
His face was deadly pale, and on being lifted down from the roof he 
fainted in the arms of the policeman. The unfortunate man was dragged 
in this condition through the branches of the fallen trees." 

This disgraceful scene is called offering " rational resistance " to 
eviction. The Provincialist leader who proposed this absurd and 
wicked course lacked sound judgment ; he was in search of the sen- 
sational and not the practical. Why did not this Provincialist and ex- 
Nationalist take his place inside one of these cabins and share with 
those unarmed peasants the dangers of an encounter with the enemy's 
armed Emergency Men ? Had these Irishmen been properly and intelli- 
gently instructed, if they were to offer serious resistance, they would have 
armed themselves with rifles and revolvers and actually defended their 
cabins against attack, or else they should have given up peaceful posses- 
sion. No sane man can call the opposition offered anything but con- 
temptible. It is degrading and disgracing to the country to see the easy 
manner these people are evicted, who are supposed to be prepared for a 
struggle. He who advised these proceedings was making Ireland a pitiful 
exhibition before Europe. 

What have been the results of this crusade of shame, this legal and 
peaceful means of procuring self-government for Ireland ? The whole 
Irish race was at first carried away by the enthusiasm evoked by fiery and 
eloquent speeches and physical opposition in the British Parliament. Irish 
Nationalists of every shade of thought have helped this movement to the 
best of their ability. Many Irishmen who years since saw the fallacy of 
the agitation, and also saw its weakness — which was visible to every 
European student of international politics — remained silent, hoping against 
hope that Parnell's vision would not remain clouded by a false theory. 
When the British insulted the Irish members by turning them out of the 
chamber it was accepting the depth of degradation both personal and 
national to return to that House. Were they equal to the crisis which 
they helped to create and which was forced on them by the British they 
would never again cross the threshold of that assembly, but would have told 
their countrymen that all attempts to appeal to British justice were hope- 
less ; that Irishmen had but one course before them, either to take other 
action or disappear from the island. This was expected to be the advice 
Parnell would send from France instead of advising perseverance in a 
folly, excusable in a young man with no political training, but not in Mr. 
Parnell at that time, who must have seen there was no peaceful solution 
of the deadlock of conflicting interests. Like Patrick Henry and the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence, they should have told their 
countrymen they were prepared to make every sacrifice for Irish self- 
government. 

But when the die was cast and Ireland precipitated into the struggle 
treason grew rampant in the ranks of her statesmen and the gallant men 
in the gap were left unaided. When the brains and intelligence of Ire- 
land's manhood should have been at the service of the glorious struggle 



BALFOURISM AND CRIME. 631 

these men inaugurated, they retreated panic-stricken ; it was desertion and 
cowardly neglect on their part, the blackest perfidy known in history. 
Secure in the belief that their treason to Ireland would never see the 
light of day, they were not content with this cowardly desertion, but 
themselves and their friends joined the enemy in a campaign of foul, 
black slander. This atrocious lie that the Land League and the Invin- 
cibles were not one and the same movement stalks abroad at this time of 
writing. 

Since the Provincialists started the Land League Ireland has lost 
550,000 in population. Had Britain slaughtered 1000 of these in fight or 
in any kind of physical resistance to her rule, or even 100, would not 
these Provincialists complain of the ruin the Nationalists were bringing 
on the country ? 

All the while English rule is rapidly clearing the people away the 
whole movement from the foundation of the Land League to the present 
hour has not improved even the condition of the farming class. There 
may be of course a few exceptions here and there, but the great masses 
of the agrarian community have been great sufferers. The reduction of 
rents in Ireland is most misleading. Recently the Marquis of Ely visited 
his property in the county Wexford and accepted fifty per cent, reduc- 
tion off his rents. This reads like a great boon to his tenants, but when 
one comes to examine the cases it is discovered that even with the fifty 
per cent, reduction the farmer is at a loss. The farm produce has fallen 
fifty per cent, in value, consequently the farmer after paying his landlord 
the rent reduced by one-half finds the balance he has left also reduced 
by one-half. What, then, must be the condition of the farming commu- 
nity where the landlords will only reduce the rents by fifteen or twenty- 
five per cent. ? There people must be in a state of hopeless pauperism. 
But this rent reduction is not due to any influence the League as an 
organization has been able to bring to bear upon the landlords as a class. 
It is the great fall in prices which has made these rents impossible of 
collection ; the landlords see this and are compelled to accept the inevi- 
table. Nothing can more clearly demonstrate the hollow and mocking 
claims which the League leaders have made from time to time when 
telling the world of the various means by which they hoped to keep the 
people fixed in the soil,* but they have been powerless and could not 
succeed. Words are poor arguments against the evictors* bayonets, hot 
water and lime are the sublimity of ridicule — ridicule which they are 
heaping upon the Irish cause by their sensational attempts at " rational 
resistance " while all this silly clap-trap of victories and the near approach 
of Home Rule is being taught the Irish people. The destroyer of the 
Irish race at home — and that destruction means their effacement as a dis- 
tinct people from the face of the earth — has gone on unceasingly in his 
peaceful havoc, causing more material loss to Ireland in the bone and 
sinew of a nation's wealth — her people — than could the most sanguinary 
war that mankind has been ever cursed with. The following are the statis- 
tics of evictions for nine years previous to the Land League, and eight years 
and six months since its creation. The reduction in agricultural values 
in a great measure increased land litigation, but the League, powerless to 
save, by its petty irritation of the landlord tyrants helped to swell the 
number of evictions. 

* In England where there was no agitation on this agrarian question the rents of 
farms were voluntarily reduced by the landlords. Greater reductions were given than all 
this noisy and misleading movement led by Irish Provincialists, backed up by hundreds 
of thousands of dollars sent by their exiled kindred, could claim to have accomplished. 



632 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

EVICTIONS EVICTIONS 

For nine years before the Land League. Since the Land League s creation. 

1869 . . . 1,741 1878 . . . 4,679 

1870 .... 2,616 1879 .... 6,239 

1871 . . . 2,357 1880 . . . 10,457 

1872 .... 2,476 1881 .... 17,341 

1873 . . . 3,078 1882 . . . 26,836 

1874 .... 2,571 1883 .... 17-855 

1875 . . . 3,323 1884 . . . 27,025 

1876 .... 2,550 1885 .... 15,428 

1877 . . . 2,177 1st half year 1886 . . . 10,848 



22,889 129,708 

We could only procure statistics for the first half year of 1886. This 
was during the mild Home Rule government of Mr. Gladstone, Lord 
Aberdeen, and Mr. John Morley. A very pretty showing for these 
saviors of the people. It will be noticed that in the year 1882, when the 
League was four years established and one year after Mr. Gladstone's 
Land Bill which was to root the people in the soil, the evictions amount 
to the enormous number of near 27,000, 4000 more than the total 
evictions for the nine years previous to the creation of this powerful 
organization — powerful in the splendid nonsense of large meetings and 
strong language — the National Land League. 

The sincerity and earnestness of the men who founded the League 
we do not question, but they either lacked ability or fell off in sincerity 
when in 1881, after proving the utter fallacy of solving this question by 
further meetings and speeches, they advised the Irish people to continue 
this nonsense further and to broaden and deepen the agitation, whatever 
that meant. It is apparent to any student of the Irish question who 
understands British interests that the public leaders of the Irish people 
did not understand or appear to understand that the evils under which 
the farmer struggled were not confined to pernicious land laws. The 
absence of industries crowded the people on the land, and no change in 
these land laws alone could remedy this grievance. Think of a whole 
people agitating for the removal of the landlords when the fact remains 
that over 300,000 tenant farmers in Ireland could not obtain a decent 
•livelihood if they were even presented without one penny repayment with 
the fee simple of their small farms. Had they, as in self-governed Britain, 
various industries to give them employment, by which means they could 
•earn food, clothing, and comfortable homes for their families, the land 
evils would affect the owners more than the tillers, as in England, where 
numbers of farms are left in the hands of the landlords, the farmer 
finding other pursuits more profitable than land cultivation. 

Had the Irish people these industries they could leave their miserable 
patches upon which they have been starving as serfs for generations, and 
there would be no need to emigrate or even to migrate, for various 
manufactures would spring up over the land under the fostering care of 
native government. The magnificent resources of Ireland now lying 
idle, the immense water power which nature has given her, whatever 
mineral wealth that lies buried in her bosom, all would receive its full 
development, for like an enchanter's wand passing over the land would 
be the magic impetus given to that beautiful island if in the full posses- 
sion of her sons. Her harbors, which dot the coast of Europe's most 
western island, would be the natural channels through which precious 
freights requiring speed in transmission would be dispatched to and from 
the New World. Trade direct with their kindred in the United States, 
with France, Spain, Italy, Russia, and Eastern parts would fill her capa- 



BALFOURISM AND CRIME. 033 

cious harbors with a merchant navy, Irish ships would be freighted with 
merchandise now carried in British vessels. The ring of the anvil and the 
hum of the loom with the whirr of machinery would be heard over the 
land. Ships now built on the Clyde in North Britain, or in Hull and 
other British towns, would grow up under industrious Irish hands by 
the Lagan, the Foyle, the Lee, the Liffey, the Slaney, and the Shan- 
non. Then Ireland could be made the happy home of twenty millions 
of people, and only a small percentage would emigrate. The bold 
and adventurous would become hardy seamen in Irish ships bearing 
the Irish flag in the peaceful pursuits of commerce, or if necessary 
defend its honor and protect its interests with the valor of generations 
of brave sires. 

This glowing picture is not impossible of realization. Less than two 
million of people accomplished it in this country. True, France came to 
their aid, but it was French interests which prompted the succor to 
destroy a common foe. Nations that try to help themselves will always 
find friends if this self-help is intelligently carried out by the great 
majority of the people. There were Tories in America, there are Orange- 
men in Ireland, and we must add to these agitators, and if objectors and 
weak drivelers say that distance and immense territory helped the 
Americans, what of Belgium, little Belgium on the European chess- 
board, who placarded the dead walls of Brussels with this famous August 
programme — it was during fete week : Monday, Fireworks ! Tuesday, 
Illuminations ! Wednesday, Revolution ! and in the theater " Muette de 
Portici " commenced on that 24th of August the revolution which did not 
cease until Belgium became an independent nation. And yet Belgium is 
but one-third the size of Ireland. Ireland is nearly as large as Switzer- 
land, Holland, and Belgium together ; she has a magnificent coast line 
and everything that Nature could endow a country with to make a great 
and grand nation. The united population of these three independent nation- 
alities is 13,096,042. And look at the miserable condition foreign rule 
aided by agitation — unquestionably aided, for without this distracting folly 
Irishmen would resort to manlier and more practical measures — has brought 
this grand Celtic nation. Ireland's present population is less than five 
millions, which is dying out at the average rate of fifty thousand annually. 
Courage, Irishmen ! There is no such word in the lexicon of nations deter- 
mined to be free as/ail. Ireland is enslaved because Irishmen deserve it and 
permit it. America, Italy, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, or Belgium did not 
gain their liberties by the silly mummeries Irishmen are practicing to-day. 
Debating and dividing ! debating and dividing ! ad nauseam in the Legis- 
lature of their enemies, the very people who are oppressing them, coercing 
them, and destroying their wealth and liberties, with whom they are carry- 
ing on the egregious folly of reasoning with. Irishmen have for some time 
past been taking part in British party struggles which cannot in the 
slightest manner affect their country ; they might as well go to France or 
Germany or Russia and espouse the cause of the democracies of these 
countries. It may be noble and philanthropic, but what can be said of 
men who go to the enemy's country to relieve suffering humanity while 
they leave their own nation in a state of destitution and neglect ? The 
great mass of the British democrats are hostile to Irish self-government ; 
it would be most injurious to their trade interests to be otherwise. The 
circumstances of the case forever forbade any real union between these 
two peoples ; increase of Irish industries, trade, and commerce is a pro- 
portionate loss to the British people whether they are democrats or 
Tories. A revolution to bring about a change of government in Britain 
might be of advantage to Ireland if she had wise and capable leaders to 
avail themselves of the opportunities offered by this temporary chaos, but 



634 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

of no use whatever if these men who now lead hold by the opinions 
and actions of to-day. They would rise and fall with the revolution. If 
successful Ireland would be still chained to a hostile republic, who on 
some plea of federation would enact Ireland's essential laws and make 
all the goods consumed as at present. Ireland's share would be as now 
emigration and the workhouse. Her tyrants would be English plutocrats 
and the moneyocracy of a plethoric shopkeeping people. 

Do Irishmen remember how Mr. Gladstone kept his promises pledged 
before the world, as his present promises are as publicly made ? He came 
to power in 1SS0, and, in the language of Mr. Parnell, imprisoned 1200- 
men without trial, and even ladies were imprisoned. To further quote Mr. 
Parnell, he even hanged innocent men on perjured testimony, although 
his agent in Ireland was made acquainted with this fact. Other men 
are suffering in penal dungeons on the same perjured testimony. These 
are the words of Mr. Parnell speaking of a man who deceived Ireland 
before, who foully deceived the Boers. As Mr. Dillon expressed it, 
all the time he was detaining the Holland deputation with false promises 
in London he was hurrying out veteran regiments from India to put 
down the Boers with bloodshed. As the Hollander said to Mr. Dillon,, 
whose words Mr. Dillon quoted in Dublin : " It was the blackest treach- 
ery ever practiced." Mr. O'Brien said when the five years of Mr. Glad- 
stone's government expired that he buried his innocent victims out of 
sight. Either Mr. Dillon, Mr. O'Brien, and Mr. Parnell spoke false then or 
they are betraying their country to-day. Let the agitators who blindly 
worship these men — men once patriotic — elect at which period these 
leaders were false to Irish self-government. In which time was Mr. 
Parnell misleading his countrymen — when he was addressing the Liver- 
pool electors in November, 1885, and told the Irishmen of Liverpool, and 
through the press the Irish race everywhere, that he fully indorsed the 
Home Rule manifesto denouncing Mr. Gladstone, and that if he (Mr. 
Gladstone) was returned to power he would try and cheat them out of 
as much Home Rule as he could, or when he spoke so fulsomely of the 
same Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons who had introduced a 
Home Rule Bill that was one gigantic cheat, and which Mr. Parnell there 
styled a final settlement of the Irish question ? Whichever decision Irish- 
men come to must be derogatory to the consistency and patriotism of the 
Irish leader. No man can reconcile these contradictory speeches, that 
delivered in the Liverpool Exchange and that spoken in the British Com- 
mons. The full text of the bill is printed in this book, and it challenges 
intelligent contradiction when it terms, in the words used by Mr. Parnell 
in Liverpool, that bill a cheat. 

After the Tories came to power, elected, as stated, by the English 
democracy, the agitators started what they called a war against the land- 
lords, which they called " the Plan of Campaign." The latest statistics 
that can be procured of the evictions in Ireland are for the quarter ending 
June, 1887. The "plan" is spoken of with unctuous praise by the 
organs of the agitators, whose weekly issues are accompanied by car- 
toons depicting the defeat of the landlords and the triumph of the 
Irish peasant, always pictured as having a comfortable, happy, and well- 
to-do appearance. Pat according to these cartoons is always victorious, 
and in most of these works of art he is helped by a sturdy English artisan. 
This " plan," which cannot be honestly characterized as anything but 
"sublime bosh," was commenced in the winter of 1886-87. To read the 
victories of this plan of campaign in the Dublin Freeman, Nation, and 
United Ireland it would be reasonable to expect that at least the farming 
community were recovering from their troubles and were becoming in a 
measure prosperous. What do these statistics tell ? That the evictions for 



BALFOURISM AND CRIME. 635 

April, May, and June, 1887, while these journals were claiming victories* 
were : 

Ulster, 2194 

Leinster, 1246 

Connaught, ........... . 2240 

Munster, 33 11 



Nine thousand people were evicted in three months of Messrs. 
O'Brien and Dillon's " plan of campaign." During this period the Pro- 
vincialist organs were claiming victory for this so-called " plan," claim- 
ing victory while the enemy's crowbar brigade was tearing down the 
roof-trees of the people, and sending on the roadside 9000 homeless 
sufferers. All this time the Provincialist orators on public platforms 
were calling on farmers and artisans to support their "plan," which 
would defeat the landlords, promising the people that when the Liberals 
would come back to power the Irish land grievance would be finally and 
satisfactorily settled. Was there ever in the history of the world a 
nation so basely deceived ? These evictions are rather a rough reply to 
these gentlemen's claim of victory. During these three months there were 
evicted nearly 1000 more people than for the three years previous to the 
League. During the years 1875, 1876, and 1877 the total number evicted 
was 8050. What can any reasonable man call this so-called power- 
ful agitation but the most monstrous delusion that ever was sent to 
destroy a people ? Ireland's only hope under the ringing blows now dealt 
her by the Tory wing of the British foe is instant action, and if the Irish 
people do not soon arouse themselves from the torpid condition they are 
in, and apparent ignorance of the great loss of population that is drain- 
ing away their country's life blood, they will be in a powerless condition 
to resist the assaults of the Liberal wing of her enemies (who, serpent- 
like, are now deceiving her by false promises) when they come to power. 
There is ruin and desolation over the land ; the reductions in the rent do 
not meet the necessities of the case, else why these evictions? whole dis- 
tricts of the country are being depopulated by the Emergency Men of the 
destroyer, all the time the citizens of Dublin are called to cheer and shout 
for victories. What a change from centuries back ere the invader 
polluted the Irish shore. 

The clime indeed is a clime to praise, 

The clime is Erin's, the green and bland, 
And this is the time, these be the days, 

Of Cahal Mor of the wine-red hand. 

Alas for Ireland, they are the days of the great popular agitator 
Mr. Parnell, when the enemy is sweeping her people from their humble 
homes. In the days of Cahal Mor, as described by the poet, plenty and 
happiness smiled upon the land. The clime remains still a clime to 
praise, but a weak and emasculated people occupy the Erin of Cahal 
Mor's days. Ireland needs the voice of the propagandist urgently to 
teach her people the true road to freedom, that action and not shouting 
in multitudes is necessary to save the remnant of the race at home. 
There is but one path, one true path, to native government — that which 
was trodden by William Tell and George Washington. 

Mr. Gladstone in a speech delivered in the early part of this year 
(1887) contends that though Ireland formerly gained concessions from 
England through fear (what an admission !), any attempt for Ireland to 
repeat her former tactics would be like warring against Heaven now. 



636 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

England's strength as compared to Ireland is as ten to one. He would 
rather rely, he said, upon England's innate sense of justice. 

England's innate sense of justice ! When did she ever display it to 
any nation she considered weaker ? She has been the bully and braggart 
of Europe since Waterloo. But for her allies in the Crimea she would 
have been destroyed ; the last fight in that peninsula was a British defeat, 
the attack on the Redan. She blustered before Europe and urged little 
Denmark into the unequal struggle with Austria and Prussia, only to 
desert her at the eleventh hour. She played the coward at that time in 
the face of Europe. This was in the days of her great minister Lord 
Palmerston. She bullied Russia in 1887, and tried to win victories by 
bluster, and surrendered everything she claimed to Count Schouvaloff 
when that Russian statesman came to London to demand the real pur- 
port of the Salisbury circular after the peace of San Stefano. This 
secret treaty she made with Russia, and a copy of which was purloined 
and published in the Globe of London, did not abash her Ministers ; they 
went to Berlin and at the conference of the European plenipotentiaries 
went through the farce of opposing clauses in the treaty already 
signed away to Russia, and then returned to England with the 
cant phrase, " Peace with honor." This is the powerful nation 
that Mr. Gladstone threatens Ireland with in his comparison of her 
strength to Ireland's. If Irishmen were true to themselves and 
prepared for other emergencies than talk Mr. Gladstone need not 
boast ; the Boers were only eighty thousand people, and they^beat her in 
three pitched battles. Insurgent Ireland if armed would be no mean 
foe for this bragging Briton. The odds in numbers would not be on the 
side of the British. While every Irishman, or nearly all in such a crisis, 
would take the field, Britain could only depend on her regular forces. 
Civilian John Bull would permit the army and militia to do the fighting 
in Ireland, he would attend to his business of money getting. Ireland 
had proof of this before when England was pushed hard for men in the 
Crimean and Indian mutiny days. She could only get raw boys to volun- 
teer, tempted by the increased bounties. John Bull is more fond of 
fighting battles over a tavern fire than in the field. He pays an army to 
do his fighting, and he thinks that is enough. But Nationalists do not 
at this moment advocate such a campaign ; war can be made in many 
ways. If Ireland is ever to be freed this course can alone save her. 
Britain will never consent to give Ireland Home Rule peacefully. There 
is not the smallest trace of light upon the political horizon that such will 
ever come. On the contrary, there are vital reasons why England will 
never consent until she is beaten to her knees. Debating and dividing 
in Parliament will not do this. 

The Saturday Review in an interesting article, speaking of the country's 
weakness in the event of war owing to the necessity of England receiv- 
ing her food supplies from abroad, observes : 

" With one considerable fleet engaged in bombarding an enemy's 
ports, and another busy in protecting our coasts against even the possi- 
bility of invasion, and a third cruising in Indian or Colonial waters, how 
many ships could be spared for the yet more essential work of convoying 
grain ships from America ? It may be answered that this, as being the 
most essential function which the fleet would have to discharge, would be, 
so to say, a first charge on our naval resources. Then which of the other 
three are to be neglected ? Are we to forego what might conceivably be 
the only means open to us of crippling our adversary or to leave our own 
coast undefended ? Or if neither of these duties are neglected, which of 
the Colonies is it that is to be left a prey to the sudden descent of some 
daring commander ? What is needed if the supply of the country is 



BALFOURISM AND CRIME. 637 

to be really secure in time of war is our navy strong enough to spare all 
the ships that are wanted for the protection of the grain ships without 
unduly weakening any one of the three other fleets, that will have each 
its work marked out for it. Can this or anything like it be said of the 
English Navy. No ! " 

This article speaks very forcibly of one of England's very weak points 
in the event of war, but there is another, and that is her gigantic commerce, 
Her argosies are in every sea, laden with the world's wealth ; these in 
immense numbers must fall a prey to any enterprising European nation 
at war with her who could command the services of daring and skillful 
commanders. Irish recruits could be had in plenty to re-enforce England's 
enemy in manning privateers in return for other assistance to enable the 
nation to shake off British rule. The united navies of Europe could 
not protect Britain's immense mercantile marine, scattered as it is in 
every sea in all parts of the globe. So that England's greatness as a 
commercial nation would be her weakness in the event of that dreadful 
scourge war. The war insurances on her merchandise upon the ocean 
would be enormous ; this source alone would cripple and bankrupt her 
merchants. But how would Ireland find herself in the event of war if 
she continues in her present course of petitioning England and playing 
that huge farce called " legal agitation " ? British Ministers would bribe, 
flatter, and promise, always on the brink of performing these, but find- 
ing ready excuses in the exigencies of the situation, an explanation which 
would be accepted by the men who could plead an excuse for Mr. Glad- 
stone's insulting Home Rule Bill. 

The war would be over and peace made. Ireland in the meanwhile 
would be living on empty promises, which would quickly turn to frowns 
when British danger had passed away. To open negotiations with Eng- 
land's enemy by the representatives of an open political movement seek- 
ing reforms, and admitting they were subjects of the British Crown and 
members of the British Parliament, would be the height of absurdity if 
attempted by men who so repeatedly discountenance insurrectionary 
propaganda ; they would be sure to meet with a rebuff. Not even the 
unaccredited agents of Britain's enemy would attempt the preliminaries 
of an alliance with such moral and physical cowards. 

In one word, Ireland must sweep away every vestige of British Parlia- 
mentary agitation before the roots of nationality can thrive in her soil. 
She must away with this weak, puling cry called " Home Rule," which 
her foe will never peacefully grant her, and go in boldly for national 
independence and the destruction and suppression of her robber 
assassins should they continue to imbrue their hands in the people's 
blood. 

Ireland needs propaganda and national public agitation, that is, 
agitation to educate the public mind to strike the foe, and teach her 
people that through the fire of sacrifice they must pass before the virgin 
gold independence, purified by the furnace of suffering, can be their 
happy lot. They are enduring more agonies to-day than could be 
inflicted by either a guerrilla war against the invader or an open 
insurrection in the field, and a tenfold greater drain upon the national 
life. The delegation which Ireland now sends to the enemy's Parlia- 
ment should be called home, and a national committee formed, one 
public and another secret. The constituencies have now the power 
to see that the nation is not misrepresented in the alien assembly by 
not being represented there at all. Irishmen have no business in that 
assembly of their nation's assassins; by their very presence there 
they in a measure recognize the infamous robber rule they suffer under. 
Keep the Parliamentary phalanx together, but let them be men whose 



63S THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

aim is the establishment of an independent nation. Should any of the 
present group still retain their original fealty to their motherland, 
they could continue as elected delegates to stay in Ireland. This 
refusal of Ireland to be represented in the British Commons would give 
the nation a locus standi at once in the European national complica- 
tions. That this be made effective, let every member be pledged or 
oath bound to remain at home and not go to the foreigner's assembly. 
If any man violates this oath or pledge let him meet a traitors fate. 
There would be no waste of Ireland's resources in agitation, no need to 
pay members — they could remain at home at their pursuits. If the foe 
declared the members' seats vacant who refused to sit, re-elect them. 
If they declared them ineligible for re-election, then elect others, 
workingmen or mechanics — any honest patriot would do. Ireland needs 
no more men who require to study the intricacies, filth, and political 
debauchery of British Parliamentary life. With the present franchise — 
while it exists — Ireland can retain hold of the representation* — only for 
the purpose of not being misrepresented — in spite of any British edict. 
No more false Nationalists could enter the British chamber; any member 
who went there would be stamped before the world as a reactionary or 
representative of the rebel Orangemen or landlord traitors. He dare 
not speak in the name of Ireland ; his words would carry no weight 
before armed Europe, the only public opinion Irishmen should solicit. 
More than their good wishes should be asked, and in every way possible 
material aid should be looked for at all seasons and at every possible 
emergency to help the patriots at home to throw off the foreigner's 
galling chains. 

Spread the light secretly and publicly among the people, not the ques- 
tion of the farmers' rent, but the full and perfect freedom of the nation. 

Also on with the sacred war ! Let the government of national defense 
be reorganized ! strike the foe unceasingly ! let him feel the arm of the 
nation he would fain destroy even in the very heart of his own citadel, 
in every town that has sent forth an invading assassin to slay the Irish- 
people ! 

In teaching the young men the manly lessons of nationality, or rather 
in guiding their minds how to use the inborn love of country which ani- 
mates them, let there be no such false teaching as that the pen is mightier 
than the sword. But rather tell them that the pen inculcates those lessons 
of freedom which compel men to take up the sword to establish their 
right to enjoy human happiness and the complete control of the destinies 
of their nation free from foreign bondage or interference ; that the sword 
of the tyrant can be shattered by the teachings of the pen, but not until 
they whom the pen has taught meet force by force, and strike off the 
shackles which bind them. How often have men of weak nerves and no 
courage misquoted the lines, " The pen is mightier than the sword " ! 

The words which Lytton puts into the mouth of Cardinal Richelieu 
have more extended meaning ; the lines are : " Beneath the 7'ule of men 
entirely great the pen is mightier than the sword." 

How different does the meaning of the great cardinal appear from 
that of those who garble a quotation from his lines. 

The entirely great can more effectually govern by the pen, which in 
their hands is mightier than the sword, but Lord Lytton expressed no 
such absurd dictum as to say that to free a nation the pen was mightier 
than the sword. Both are necessary ; the pen must teach and propagate 
healthy national doctrines, but the sword must smite or the teachings 
could bring forth no fruit. 

If Irishmen do not take some action, and at once, they are lost ; there 
is no other hope for them as a people under the sun. 



BALFOURISM AND CRIME. 639 

The following pregnant article appeared in the Russian organ the St. 
Petersbourg Gazette. It will be remembered that no article on foreign 
alliances or any subject touching the military policy of the empire could 
be written or published without official sanction, which makes this article 
of more interest to patriotic Irishmen : 

" Like all European states Russia has been the enemy of every other 
country and may be so again ; but she has only two enemies with whom 
she will inevitably have to enter into a struggle for life or death. They 
are Germany and England. The conflict between the Slavs and the 
Germans is a historical and unavoidable necessity. As to the coming 
struggle with England, Russia should prepare herself by a rapprochement 
with Ireland. The United States of America were not able to gain their 
freedom without foreign help. And the liberation of Ireland is only a 
question of time. Whether the result will be the autonomy or the com- 
plete independence of Ireland, England will in either case be completely 
paralyzed as regards her action abroad. It is therefore undoubtedly 
the direct interest of Russia that Ireland should be victorious in the 
struggle in which she is at present engaged." 

The news has reached us that Russia has bridged the Oxus ; Russia 
is moving her troops to outflank the British until she thinks the hour has 
come for the war for empire in the East. Russia will not help Ireland 
unless Irishmen show a disposition to help themselves, and so be a useful 
ally. They can do something against their foe as a retaliation for the 
evictions and banishment of the people. This of course means the men at 
home. They and they alone can carry out successfully any enterprise ; they 
are wrong if they expect any material help from even their own banished 
kindred unless they themselves do their duty. Irishmen in America have 
been drained of immense sums of money for agitation and they are in no 
mood to contribute much at present. The men in the gap should not 
depend too much on outside assistance. It is feared that this power is 
much exaggerated at home. While there are thousands of patriotic men in 
these States who have been good and true men at home, they soon learn 
other duties in America. If the men in the gap do their duty they will 
not be neglected from many sources, but it is to them the scattered Irish 
race look for the expulsion of the ancient enemy. Work can best be done by 
those residing on the scene. Let them remember that, as Washington Irving 
expresses it, "the natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our 
enemy with the least harm to ourselves, and this of course is to be effected 
by stratagem." Men who have no courage and who are not prepared to 
face the risks of a struggle, and yet keep up the incessant cry of Tory 
persecutions, tell us that they are satisfied with their course, i. e., this silly 
agitation. But if they "knew a better that they could pursue with honor 
to themselves they would embrace it." This apology is but the explana- 
tion of a slave, who was born and will die Britain's serf ; as Shakspere 
expressed it : " The arms are fair when the intent of bearing them 
is just." 

Men talk of evictions and do not seem to realize what a terrible train 
of suffering follows in their wake, the workhouse and the famine death- 
bed. John Mitchel in describing the slow decay and fever of »one of 
these deaths so frequent in unhappy Ireland concludes thus: "Oh! 
Pity and Terror ! what a tragedy is here — deeper, darker than any bloody 
tragedy ever enacted under the sun with all its dripping daggers and 
sceptered palls. Who will compare the fate of men burned at the stake 
or cut down in battle, men of high hearts and the pride of life in their 
veins, and an eye to look up to heaven or to defy their slayer to his 
face — who will compare it with this?" To face this horrible famine death 
John Morley sent the Crown forces to evict 10,848 of those unhappy 



640 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

people, whose roof-trees were torn down and they sent homeless on the 
wayside. Oh, monstrous cruelty ! and then to hear his hypocrite words. 
Such has been the effect of this infamous teaching by the agitators that 
Irishmen turned out with bands and banners to cheer this Englishman's 
copartner in crime, Lord Aberdeen. Has Ireland not drunk enough of 
British treachery that she must escort off her murderers with tokens of 
esteem ? If the British spat upon them they could not further degrade 
them than these men have. Nothing baser or more humiliating has 
darkened the pages of Irish history than this parade of the Dublin trades 
to -escort off a representative of Ireland's invader, the deputy of a 
brigand government. There is no doubt the people were deceived, the 
Provincialist press kept back the truth ; the writers in these papers have 
so eaten dirt by this English alliance that they have deceived themselves 
and deceived the people. But there will be a day of reckoning. When 
Gladstone, returned to power, introduces another mock Home Rule Bill 
the people will not so easily be deceived by another cheat. Irishmen should 
remember English treachery from the death of Owen Roe down to Mr. 
Gladstone's bill, remember the centuries of false promises. 

Bear witness, blood-stained Mullaghmast 

And Smerwick's crimson tide, 
Limerick, by your treaty stone 

Proclaim it far and wide, 
That he who trusts in British faith 

And has not been betrayed 
Must always keep his stalwart hand 

Clasped on his ready blade. 

Ireland is to-day as the country of the Maccabees when the aged 
Mattathias spoke of his brave sons, as recorded in Holy Writ : 

" Woe is me, wherefore was I born to see the ruin of my people, and the 
ruin of the holy city [holy Ireland], and to dwell there when it is even in 
the hands of the enemies ? " 

Ireland's answer should be as the words of Judas Maccabees to his 
brethren : 

"And Judas said, Gird yourselves and be valiant men and be ready 
against the morning that you may fight with those nations that are 
assembled against us to destroy us and our sanctuary. 

" For it is better to die in battle than to see the evils of our nation and 
of the holies." 

Is not this monster called British Government in Ireland a malefactor ? 
It has assassinated the law, it has brutally murdered the people, it is a 
hideous usurper destroying the Irish nation. This monster puts out its 
huge tentacles in every direction to crush and smother all resistance to 
its infamous appetites. Can its unhappy victims feel or reason with sound 
judgment while stupefied beneath the fetid odors this monster exhales 
around ? Alas, no ! These malodorous and poisonous vapors deaden and 
infatuate ; their effects are visible in this humiliating and degrading thing 
called " legal agitation." These unhappy victims of the poisonous fumes 
of slavery and persecution wear the very monster's livery that they seek 
to in p^rt destroy. 

Listen to the words which a British Minister — one of the hypocritical 
brood this monster spawns forth to crush unhappy Ireland — uses in 
speaking of alien rule in that island : " It is a system which is founded 
on the bayonets of 30,000 soldiers encamped permanently in a hostile 
country. It is a system as completely bureaucratic as that with which 
Russia governs Poland, or as that which was common in Venice under 
the Austrian rule. An Irishman at this moment cannot move a step, he 
cannot lift a finger in any parochial, municipal, or educational work, with- 



BALFOURISM AND CRIME. 641 

out being confronted, interfered with, controlled by an English official 
appointed by a foreign government and without the shadow or shade of 
representative authority" Who was this monster who thus for the selfish 
purposes of British party politics took the scalpel knife and exposed his 
nation's infamies in Ireland, and who would also use that weapon to cut 
prostrate Ireland's throat just as readily if he could or if it suited the 
exigencies of his political surroundings ? Was it Gladstone or Morley ? 
No ! both these British hypocrites have also deceived Ireland by express- 
ing condemnation of their country's rule when it suited their purpose so to 
speak. Was it Balfour? No! his time to plead for suffering Ireland 
and to condemn Morley, Gladstone, or some other coercer is yet to come. 
The man who delivered the speech of which this on Ireland was part is 
Joseph Chamberlain. Ten days after the government of which he was a 
member was defeated he spoke those words ; they were spoken in Hollo- 
way, London, June 18, 1885. Fresh from crime, fresh from the murder 
of the Irish people, a partner in all the monstrous iniquities of the 
Ministry he belonged to, as if in mockery he condemns the system he 
himself helped to administer. What is the condemnation of sin by 
Satan compared to this British deviltry, practiced with such fell power on 
deceived Irishmen by these incarnate fiends, the ex-Ministers of British 
brutality ? To-day Morley, Gladstone, Spencer, and Aberdeen pose as 
Ireland's friends ; in a little while it may be Balfour, Salisbury, and 
Goschen, as it was on this occasion Joseph Chamberlain. They are all 
feelers of this huge devilfish British rule in foreign nations. See how 
they murder the Dacoits in Burmah and lay waste the country, boasting 
like the burglars they are of the great booty they captured — the lacs of 
rupees, the immense plunder of diamonds, rubies, and other precious 
stones. They term the proceeds of their theft of portable property loot, 
and their land robberies confiscation. They are preparing for another 
burglary in Venezuela, and if they think they can attempt it with impunity 
this huge devilfish will put forward one of his tentacles and grasp the 
plunder and crush the victims who own it to death. 

Irish-Americans, is it to support the mockery of agitation or com- 
promise with this monster that you send your hard-earned money to be 
spent in what was folly but what has become crime ? Away with this supine 
thing called " legal agitation," this ally of one of the tentacles of this devil- 
fish. Let Ireland have intelligent and patriotic agitation. Nail your 
colors to the mast — Ireland's national independence, as complete a sever- 
ance from political connection with Britain as the Infinite created geo- 
graphically, that independence which Washington won on many a hard- 
fought field. Publicly proclaim these doctines, Irish-Americans, on this 
free soil won by heroes' blood ; the truth need not hide its head with shame 
or persecution. Teach and preach Irish nationhood and the men in the 
gap will do their duty. 

Irishmen at home, do not deny the faith that is in you. Your invader 
cannot wreak more vengeance on you than he is doing at present under 
false issues. 

The Tory monster who controls British power at this time of writing 
continued the assassin rule of horrors at a recent meeting in Mitchels- 
town. Mr. T. P. Gill, M. P., a leading Provincialist, thus describes this 
scene : 

" Dean McCarthy had just begun his opening remarks when I noticed 
the body of police advance at a quick pace upon the meeting and press 
their way roughly in. It appeared subsequently that they had a govern- 
ment reporter in their midst. This movement caused great excitement 
among the people. Several men faced round, turning their backs upon 



642 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

the platform. Things looked threatening when Mr. Dillon began to 
speak. 

" It was just then the police made a new movement. They crushed 
their way still further into the dense crowd and began hammering the 
horses with their batons. The horses plunged and kicked and the people 
faced about again. A man was struck with a baton and he struck back 
with his stick. Somebody threw a stone ; in a second the police formed 
and charged. There was one moment of panic in the crowd, when it swung 
back on the wagonette, but only a moment. Like a flash those nearest 
the police rallied, and infuriated at this wanton and unprovoked attack, 
fell upon them with their blackthorns. There were a few seconds of brisk 
fighting, when the police turned and fled in the wildest confusion, rolling 
over each other in their efforts to escape. Several of their helmets tum- 
bled off, which the people seized and tore to shreds or kicked before them 
like footballs. They disappeared around the corner in a shower of 
stones. 

" We on the wagonette turned our attention to getting the ladies into 
the priest's house, which was at the back of our improvised platform. 
While we were doing so we heard a volley of musketry from the street 
up which the police had fled and in which their barracks were situated. 
Then another ; then another. Mr. Dillon rushed down the square and 
up the street toward the barracks. The police were firing out of the win- 
dow of the second story. One man fell dead at the foot of the square, 
another with a bullet through the roof of his skull lay in his blood against 
the wall. Mr. Mandeville, the solicitor. who was to defend Mr. O'Brien, 
had the flesh torn from his temples. Many others were wounded. Mr. 
Dillon rushed into the barracks. There he found the commander of the 
police raging like a maniac and calling on the men to come out and fire 
volleys up and down the street, an order which Mr. Dillon, holding the 
officer in the hall by main force, prevented him from executing. 

" I went to the police barracks to interview the magistrate in command. 
Mr. Dillon had been unable to prevail upon him to withdraw the excited 
constabulary, who were by this time drawn up in a double line across the 
street where they had been firing. . . 

" We found the resident magistrate, a young man white with excitement. 
The sleeve of his tweed coat was smudged with blood, and he held in his 
hand a stout stick which he shook nervously while he spoke. The corpse 
of one of the murdered men had been dragged off the roadway and lay 
right across the threshold of the barracks door in a pool of clotted blood. 
A police officer coming in stepped over it. 

" As I returned to the square I found a tall young fellow dipping his 
handkerchief in the blood of the man who was first shot. He put the 
handkerchief to his heart and said to me : ' 1 am going to keep this for- 
ever as a pledge of ?nortal hate against English rule.' " 

We drop the curtain on the action of this history at this scene of 
blood. Irishmen should, like the Tipperary peasant, remember the brutal 
deeds of the invader, and think of the blood-stained handkerchief of 
Mitchelstown — think of it to nerve their arms, think of it to make 
weapons of every tool they have in their workshops, think of it to make 
bullets of their leaden gutters, to secrete powder, to secrete arms, to use 
every engine of destruction that human ingenuity can devise to slay the 
murderous invaders of their country. But never can this physical oppo- 
sition — the only opposition to a foreign invader that enslaved mankind 
ever attempted who seriously sought freedom — never can it become effec- 



BALFOURISM AND CRIME. 643 

tual until the last remnant of this folly called constitutional agitation is sivept 
from the land. It has been sapping the patriotism of the country only to 
destroy it. Let the line be drawn hafd and fast. Whip these poltroons 
who tell you that you are powerless before Britain out of the national 
ranks, men who degrade you by their cowardly teaching. If you cannot 
strike, then you are unworthy of your freedom. Britain is destroying you 
while you are inert and listing to these dribbling inanities. Drive these 
renegades out of the temple of Liberty who after all the cruel experience of 
these later years would have your dying people hug that slimy, slippery 
delusion " legal agitation." Its very name is a foul insult to justice and 
the acceptance of a hideous crime, clothing the robberies and assassina- 
tions of the invader with the garments of legality, smirching the ermine 
of justice with blood. 

The party of action has kept too long in the background ; let it 
now resume the reins of government. The people are tired of this hol- 
low, mouthing Provincialism. Let the Nationalists now come boldly for- 
ward and assert themselves, not by irregular acts of isolated warfare, the 
futile and unavailing efforts of a few scattered skirmishers, but let Ire- 
land speak by the concentrated and united work of a nation of brave 
men — men who look to the salvation of their country by the deliberate 
sacrifice of their lives if success demands this holocaust on the altar of 
their country. 

Like Winkelried, some brave patriots must take the invader's spears 
within their breasts to open a pathway for their brothers to assail him. 

Men of action, you must also use propaganda to expose and destroy 
the pernicious poison now circulating in Irish blood, and to remove the 
false and lying doctrine now clouding Irish intellects through years of false 
teaching. To voice the truth, to stamp upon it the impress of brave 
deeds, that is your sacred and solemn duty at this momentous hour. He 
who further crouches behind that crime called " legal agitation " is a 
moral coward and a slave. He who believes in his nation's right to her 
independence and yet continues to temporize over a petition to Ireland's 
brutal destroyer for a provincial assembly is a traitor. That petition of 
self-abasement and degradation has been repeatedly answered by the 
most gifted and the most skillfully hostile enemy of Irish freedom, Wm. 
Ewart Gladstone, in his insulting bill which would confer further despo- 
tism and more chains. He who believes in Ireland's right to the unfettered 
control of her destiny, and yet would mislead his countrymen by clinging 
outwardly to a false and criminal programme which would barter his 
nation's honor with the foe, let him and such as him live in history with 
Benedict Arnold and other infamous men who have betrayed their trust. 

He who in secret professes pure national doctrines, but yet lacks the 
moral courage to uphold them in the light of day, belongs not to a people 
capable of gaining or maintaining liberty. He who trifles and tempo- 
rizes with the nation's right, and who abuses his countrymen's intelligence 
by preaching to them of self-government by installments, is like the 
butcher who distributes in parcels the carcase that he first kills. They 
would slay the national life. They would make infamous the national 
honor. Upon such renegade heads be anathema. 

Brothers in Ireland, agitate and spread the light, the glorious sun- 
burst of complete independence. Brothers of the propaganda, that is your 
duty. And also you, O Party of Action ! do not belie your name longer ; 
arouse and awake to the dangers of your beloved nation. You can strike, 
yet remain concealed from the invader. You must harass him unceas- 
ingly. When necessary change your hiding place, but yet always fight 
him. Be always before him, but never beneath his hand. Although 
remaining concealed, show him, make him feel, you have not left the field. 



644 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

As your comrades fall, as fall some must, either in the field of combat or 
on the scaffold of the foe, remember that they are honorable deaths alike 
suffered in this holy and sacred war. Fill up the gaps at once ; the emi- 
grant ship can spare you numerous recruits. What you lack in numbers 
make up in daring. 

In this plan of campaign lies your country's salvation, in the other 
— the nation's death. 

Take, then, at once the initiative. Oh, my brothers, on the sacred soil 
of our motherland recommence the combat. There will be help soon to 
fan the tiny flame your hands must light into a huge conflagration, which 
will destroy the monster that has preyed on our people for centuries. 

'Tis now no time for wisdom or debates ; 

To your own hands are trusted all your fates ; 

And better far in one decisive strife 

One day should end our labor or our life 

Than keep this mourning isle, these fruitful lands, 

Still press'd and press'd by such inglorious hands. 

Behold, ye warriors, and exert your powers ; 
Death is the worst, a fate which all must try, 
And for our gallant country 'tis a bliss to die. 
The gallant man, though slain in fight he be, 
Yet leaves his nation safe, his children free, 
Entails a debt on all the grateful state ; 
His own brave friends shall glory in his fate, 
His wife live honored, all his race succeed, 
And late posterity enjoy the deed. 



ADDENDUM. 

IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893. 

The years are passing, and since this work was written many men who 
figure in its pages have passed away — friend and foe: Charles Stewart 
Parnell and Wm. H. Forster, Joseph Gillis Biggar and Captain King 
Harman, and many others who have been prominent on the stage of Irish 
history. 

But "How is little Ireland and how does she stand?" The answer 
can be summarized by saying: "A foreign flag still floats over Dublin 
Castle, and the red-coated soldiery of the invader are still in occupation 
of the island." The Tory ministers have vanished and their Whig oppo- 
nents are now in power. The fierce and wolfish Tory who would crush 
out every spark of nationality in coercion, has been succeeded by the 
slimy Whig-serpent who breathes over the land the noxious vapors that 
stupefy and confuse; and the people, drugged with his effective poison, 
appear not to know where to direct their movements or to whom to look 
for guidance. 

What have been the effects of this much talked-of coercion on the 
Irish nation? Have the Tories added in any manner to the normal 
destruction of foreign rule? 

Again, what have been the blessings of all these so-called concessions, 
these land bills which were fought against so bitterly by the House of 
Lords? What benefit to Ireland is the disestablishment of the Irish 
Episcopalian Church, which aroused for a time the cry "Away with the 
House of Lords!" followed by Orange threats of insurrection in Ireland? 
The answer to both these questions is the continued condition of unend- 
ing decay in the Irish nation which proves — proves with the stern logic of 
actual facts — that neither coercion nor concession can alter the condition 
of a nation under the rule of the foreigner. While one vestige of 
alien rule remains in Ireland this decadence and degradation must con- 
tinue. The country is now under the sway of that political Chadband, 
Wm. Ewart Gladstone, who with unctious piety, as he turneth up his eyes 
with fervor, saith to the Irish "for what Home Rule you do receive be 
unto me thankful." And while this man, whose hypocrisy is so great 
that he even deceives himself, talks of liberty for Ireland, he retains in his 
prisons the confreres of the Provincialists, who are now his allies in trying 
to eradicate every vestige of nationality from the Irish people. 

Jospeh Mullet is at this date, December, 1893, in a dungeon of the 
enemy. He and his comrades, at a single word from this Briton, W. E. 
Gladstone, could be restored to the outer world; but his mouthpiece, Mr. 
Asquith, tells the Irish race that he (Mullet) and his imprisoned 
colleagues will not be released. The same denial applies to all the Irish 
political prisoners, Dr. Gallagher, John Daly, and their friends. 

Mr. Gladstone rants about his love for Ireland, and to prove it has 
taken into the British Whig camp the former Land League leaders, whose 
movement created the secret Land League — the Invincibles. 

The Irish Provincialists, having deserted and slandered their comrades 
who took action by order of the Land League Executive, are rewarded by 
a close alliance with this prince of hypocrites, the British Premier. But 
for their former friends, the Invincibles, he has continued dungeons, toils, 

645 



646 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

and chains. Charles Stewart Parnell and John Dillon truly described 
him: "As the most unrivaled of coercers," and the "master of mis- 
representation." 

Take this Liberal chieftain's "Irish Government Bill" of 1893, popu- 
larly called a Home Rule Bill. This measure is an English bull, for it is 
called "Home Rule" because it does not contain one particle of Home 
Rule within its four corners. By the proposed Assembly legislation for 
Irish trade, navigation and commerce are absolutely forbidden. The 
effect of this prohibition would be to deprive Ireland of the corner stone 
of a nation's prosperity. In addition to this important prohibition, the 
right to control Irish finance and Irish land was to be withheld from the 
Irish legislature ; with a promise undoubtedly as false as all British promises 
to Ireland — that it would be restored to the Dublin Assembly in some 
years to come. Had this wretched measure, falsely called "Home Rule," 
passed into British law, it would be found to have no more power to arrest 
Irish decadence than the many previous bills which passed through the 
House of Lords after weeks of angry and violent contention. 

Foreign rule cannot be reformed by a local Assembly in Dublin ; the 
overpowering influence of foreign interests — interests antagonistic to Irish 
prosperity — forbid it. There has never been a solution to the infamous 
outrage of foreign usurpation of a nation's right to rule but that of abso- 
lute and complete independence. 

Some writers, who know a little of this Irish question, tell us that 
Ireland could not stand alone; that she would be conquered by some 
other nation if freed from British rule. How then, does Holland, Bel- 
gium^ and Switzerland remain independent? Ireland is as large as these 
three nations combined. Because of the rival jealousies of the great 
powers, they will say: "It is these very jealousies and rival interests called 
the 'balance of power in Europe' which permit Britain herself to remain 
in the possession of so much colonial territory." Her physical power 
compared to theirs is simply contemptible. In a very short time an Irish 
republic could turn out an army superior to the boasted nation's. 

The Whig premier is an eloquent juggler in the use of words; he has. 
invested his Home Rule Bill with a false sentiment by the glamour which 
his utterances have cast around it, and thus succeeded in deceiving both 
friends and foes. 

The stupid and intolerant Tory and his instrument, the fanatic and 
bigoted Orangeman, both of whom have aided the "master of misrepre- 
sentation," aided him unwittingly in his endeavor to hoodwink the Irish 
people into accepting a powerless Assembly in Dublin in return for their 
stolen independence. He tried to induce the Irish to freely accept this 
enemy's flag and thereby strengthen the British empire. It has been said 
and will be repeated: "Why this hostility of the Tories, Unionists, so- 
called, and Orangemen, if this bill be worthless?" Will Irishmen 
remember that the self-same hostility has been displayed by these stupid 
partisans to every measure that appeared in any manner an apparent 
concession to Ireland, or Irish sentiment? Not one of these measures, 
notwithstanding the great opposition of Tories, Lords, and Orangemen, 
and heralded with all the drums and trumpets of the Provincialists as 
great victories, have been of the smallest, the most infinitesimal, benefit 
to Ireland. Poverty, eviction, and emigration have not been in any man- 
ner arrested; the unceasing decadence goes steadily on. 

How far Mr. Gladstone deceives himself it is impossible to know; for 
it is questionable if this aged statesman knows himself. He speaks of 
this deceptive and shadowy bill as if it contained all the glorious freedom 
won at Yorktown. When placed even beside the Colonial legislatures of 
Canada or Australia it is a mockery. In Leeds Townhall, in 1881, Mr. 



IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893. 647 

Gladstone spoke in glowing terms of his Land Bill and all the blessings it 
was to confer upon Ireland ; possibly he believed this himself. To main- 
tain his position he quoted the extravagant eulogies of Sir Charles Gavan 
Duffy as given in an earlier chapter. The succeeding year, when Ire- 
land had fifteen months' experience of the blessings of this Land Bill, 
over twenty-two thousand people were evicted, more than the total for ten 
years preceding the League; and yet this bill, according to Mr. Glad- 
stone and his Irish admirers, was to confer unheard-of blessings upon the 
Irish farming community. Other so-called land concessions have followed 
this, but evictions continue and funds are needed to-day to feed the 
houseless victims of these land laws. 

If this Home Rule Bill should ever become a part of the Briton's 
legislature for Ireland, there is nothing in the womb of time more certain 
but that it would, like every preceding British measure, become entirely 
inoperative. This it must become of necessity; emigration, poverty, 
and decay would only be hastened by the disappointment arising from its 
powerlessness. The Chambers would gabble, while the nation was dying. 
The Briton would sneer at Irishmen's incapacity for self-government, 
while all the actual power still remained in the hands of the foreigner. 
Possibly the offices of British rule in Ireland, now held by Orange 
sympathizers, might be and probably would be transferred to the Provin- 
cialists ; Britain has always rewarded recreants. But Ireland would find 
that these new officials would continue as steadfastly British as are the 
present holders. The Provincialists would of course hail their acceptance 
of these offices as the advent to power of Irish authority and they would 
like their chief, the "great master of misrepresentation," try and deceive 
the people into the belief that Ireland had her own government. The 
public mind would become more and more distracted and Britain's mis- 
sion, the removal of the Irish Celt from Ireland, would go on amid the 
■clanging of angry tongues, and noisy and fruitless discussion. The 
nations would begin to believe that the British slanders were true and 
that Ireland could not govern. Having got what they accepted as Home 
Rule, they would be in continued poverty and ruin. Irishmen must 
remember that no British law, neither coercion nor so-called concession, 
can alter the inevitable decay of the Irish nation while it remains an 
appendage of a foreign crown. Slightly altering the Orange threat in 1870, 
after the church disestablishment, the cardinal doctrine of Irish nation- 
ality and Ireland's only hope for prosperity and happiness is to kick the 
foreign sovereign's crown into the Irish Sea. Any struggle for impossible 
reform is vain and criminal — criminal because it is helping the enemy to 
firmer fasten the chains of foreign conquest upon the nation, keeping the 
people stupefied and pursuing a phantom while the enemy proceeds with 
his quiet destruction of the Irish race. 

The cry which now agitates the Provincialists is the destruction of 
the House of Lords. The great "master of misrepresentation" has 
touched upon this in his recent address in Edinburgh (September, 1893). 
But he is, as usual, careful in his manner of alluding to this question. He 
wishes to infuse some hope into the Irish people that this obstacle can be 
removed. All this rant is utter folly. The House of Lords is as firmly set 
in the British Constitution as the Crown itself. Nothing short of revolu- 
tion can remove these twin pillars of Britain's present regime. 

The Gladstonian press, Irish, British, and American, tells us that the 
Lords, by throwing out the Home Rule Bill, opposed the will of the 
people. Nonsense! the Lords, on the contrary, affirmed the will and vote 
■of the people — the English people, whose opinions and wishes the Peers 
alone recognize. It is by the aid of Irish Provincialists' votes that Mr. 
Gladstone came to power. The British verdict is opposed to his Home 



648 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

Rule Bill, and there is little doubt that at the next general election he 
will be overwhelmingly defeated on this so-called home rule issue. 
Newspapers and speakers, comparing the present attitude of the House of 
Lords to that of the reform period in 1832, compare two subjects- 
totally dissimilar. The Reform Bill of 1832 was an English question, 
the question which confronts the Peers in 1893 is an Irish issue purely, 
and which they call dismemberment of the empire, as the Austrian s 
termed the Italian claim to Lombardy and Venice, or the Turks to the 
Greek demand for autonomy and independence. Irish-Americans and 
Americans who study this subject have no means of knowing the immense- 
vote of English workingmen that has been recorded against home rule 
in the elections of 1886 and 1892. It is all folly and humbug to call this 
a question between classes and masses. The English people, who belong, 
to both of these great divisions, are divided upon this question. A 
minority support Mr. Gladstone, through party fealty, not for any love 
they bear Ireland or the Irish. And the great majority are arrayed 
against this measure, absurd as it may be to call it a Home Rule Bill. 
Backed up by the House of Lords, it looks very likely as if the English 
majority will have their way. Mr. Gladstone will retire the bill to a shelf 
and try and placate the Irish Whigs with honeyed promises of its. 
resurrection. 

Before closing this addendum the writer would wish to draw attention 
to the present attitude of the British Whig enemy, now in power. A 
gigantic movement is on foot to denationalize the Irish people and to 
draw into the vortex every organ of Irish opinion, favorable to the Mephis- 
tophelian doctrines of this would-be British savior of Ireland. It has 
unfortunately been in some measure successful, and the editors of many 
Irish-American papers have adopted this wily Briton's apparent views, 
which are to remove all landmarks between the Irish and British people. 
The real endeavor is to strengthen the tottering British empire by turn- 
ing the hostile Irish people into its supporters; and most particularly 
the Irish-American section, which the wily Briton has good reason to 
dread. This is endeavored to be accomplished by the illusory promises 
of these hypocritical Whig leaders; not one material blessing, not even, 
the smallest prosperity can they give to Ireland. They are full well 
aware that no laws they can pass will alter the condition of this British 
dependency, Ireland, so long as it remains beneath the blighting and 
destructive power of the British Crown. To Irish independence they are 
equally as hostile as their Tory brothers. This gigantic endeavor to make- 
Irishmen Britons, by at first making them kindly disposed to the Glad- 
stonians, is made manifest in the career of Lord Aberdeen and his 
amiable countess. This lady's patronage of Irish industries and other 
kindly actions is but part of a huge network set to catch the trusting and 
impulsive Irish Celt. 

The crowning of this edifice has been intrusted to Mr. Blake, an Irish- 
Canadian, now member of the enemy's London Parliament. The sancti- 
monious "master of misrepresentation" has intrusted this Whig statesman 
with a letter to be read on Irish day at the Chicago World's Fair. This 
letter is dated September 2, 1893, and must have been sent to Mr. Blake 
near one month previous. Its object is to try and instill into the Irish- 
American mind the love this British Premier holds for them, at the self- 
same time keeping some of their brothers in British prisons. We quote a 
passage from this letter. "You are about to address Americans, who in 
all ranks and in all parts of their magnificent country have shown an 
active and almost universal sympathy with Ireland; and especially Irish- 
Americans, through whose energies and inexhaustible affection for Ireland 
has been effected the most remarkable oceanic migration ever known in 



IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893. 649 

the history of the world." How genuine to the unsophisticated, and 
even the cultured American, or Irish-American, are these expressions of 
kindly interest; how marvelously must this man deceive himself if this 
whole letter was not written for a purpose ! Who, but this remarkable 
Briton, could term the gigantic drain of Ireland's health, the bone and 
sinew of her people, as the offspring of the energies and inexhaustible 
affection of the Irish-Americans, when the direct cause is the brutal 
foreign laws — laws now administered by this sanctimonious Briton who 
endeavors to deceive mankind. It is the curse of foreign rule in Ireland 
which has left no employment for the people that they must either die or 
emigrate. Had this aged Briton, ever in his long life, witnessed the 
departure of these people from their homes, he might have witnessed a 
scene unparalelled in any country — the sobs and shrieks of aged parents, 
the parting between mother and child, sister and brother, the dying wail 
of the expatriated Gael. A parting in many cases as heartrending as a 
scene by an open grave. The last fond look on their beloved home and 
country, so loved by the Irish Celt, that it is tearing his heartstrings 
asunder to be compelled to part from the early associations of childhood. 
Note the words applied by the great "master of misrepresentation" to 
the dreadful exodus of the Irish race from Ireland — "Oceanic migra- 
tion." As well might the Turkish chieftains have termed the Bulgarian 
massacres as the "heavenly migration" of the Bulgarian people. But the 
Briton has become more successful than the Turk. The Oriental could 
not slaughter in such hordes as the Occidental destroys and exiles by his 
cursed laws and cruelties. 

The passing into law of this measure which Mr. Gladstone and his 
followers so cunningly tell us would give the Irish people full control over 
their domestic affairs, would find a people wholly disarmed so far as 
British law can be enforced to effect it, and also under a perpetual Tory 
coercion law which remains still unrepealed upon the British statute 
book, and which this promised Dublin legislature would be powerless to 
either repeal or alter. 

British soldiers and police would still remain authorized to enter any 
house in Ireland on the plea of searching for concealed arms. Ireland, 
under what is insultingly termed Home Rule, would continue manacled 
by the laws of a foreign people. The Dublin Chambers would have no 
power whatever over this question of disarmament, as it is one of the many 
so-called Imperial questions which the "master of misrepresentation" 
withheld from the legislative power of the Dublin Chambers. The last 
disarming act, it will be remembered, was passed by this wily Whig chief- 
tain when he last posed as a Home Rule minister in 1886. 

There is no badge of conquest more insulting, there is none that voices 
in stronger language the usurpation of a foreign nation, than this disarm- 
ing of a people. This insulting and degrading badge of servility would 
remain fastened upon the Irish nation while that country was supposed 
to have had self-government conferred upon her by the voluntary action 
of her invader and destroyer the British. But why pursue this mockery, 
called home rule; further, not all the eloquence of "misrepresentation" 
nor all the panegyrics of this marvelous British Minister on Ireland, can 
alter facts. No amount of glamour can make falsehood truth. 

The Irish people cordially indorse the words of Mr. Blake at the 
Chicago Fair when he had finished reading the British Premier's letter, 
"Godspeed the day when the Irish will govern Ireland." When that 
time comes, as come it will if the Irish people are true to themselves, Mr. 
Gladstone or no other British Premier will have any more authority in 
Ireland than they have to-day in France or Germany. But to realize 
this, the Irish people must take prompt and instant action. There is 



650 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

one great phase of this Irish question which agitators, orators, and writers 
appear either to purposely avoid or to completely overlook. That is the 
terrific exodus of the Irish people from their native land. This goes on 
unceasingly, no matter what party is in power in the enemy's country, or 
what policies or agitations occupy either the Irish or British mind. This 
enormous drain on the population should awaken Irish intellects from the 
stupor or fanaticism which induces them to pursue this ever disappearing 
phantom called home rule. This fearful destruction of a people — for 
they are practically destroyed in so far as their own country is concerned. 
The delusion of the Celts returning with a vengeance is only another 
dream of the agitators. In the event of a foreign war a small percentage 
of the present generation would likely do so; or an American war, which 
would enlist all of the race here as Americans, if not as Irishmen. But no 
self-respecting people will cling to this delusion. It is from Ireland that 
the great blow to the enemy must come, helped of course by a respectable 
contingent of Irishmen in other lands. But that contingent is not 
strengthened but weakened by emigration. Hold fast to your country if 
possible. Every Irishman who can stay at home and does not is a 
deserter from his nation. We know how difficult, and in some cases 
impossible this is to accomplish. Which is proof beyond yea or nay, that 
these so-called Gladstonian concessions have conceded nothing. The 
Irish Celt would never fly from his country if he could possibly stay there. 
The returns of the Irish Register General for the quarter ending June 30, 
1893, gives the following figures: 

Irish Births for three months ending June 30, 1893, .... 28,301 
Irish Deaths for three months ending June 30, 1893, . . . 20,306 



Gain in the population by births over deaths, .... 7,955 

In the same period the loss by emigration was, .... 23,879 



Total loss to the nation for three months ending June 30, 1893, 15,884 

This exodus is for the last three months ending June 30, 1893, of the 
benign rule of Gladstone the Home Ruler. 

These appalling figures stand forth in letters of living fire to draw the 
attention of the people, and more especially Irishmen, to the infamous 
destruction of their race in Ireland by the rule of the foreigner. It is a 
sad and terrible corroboration of the arguments used by the writer 
throughout this work. 

As this Addendum goes to press, a Dublin newspaper comes to hand, 
The Irish Weekly Independent, of January 27, 1894; in its columns there 
is an expose of Dublin Castle rule under the sway of Gladstone and Mor- 
ley, Ireland's hypocritical friends. This extract will speak for itself: 

REVELATIONS! — THE SECRET INQUIRY IN THE CASTLE — HOW JOHN 
MORLEY'S SERVANTS HUNT UP CRIME — THE REVIVAL OF A REIGN OF 
TERROR. 

In view of the rumors which have been circulated as to the methods 
employed by the Castle under the government of Mr. John Morley, to 
make a case against the men Nolan and Mearna, who were charged with 
the Cardiff Lane murder, a representative of this journal obtained an 
interview with Mr. Fred. Allan, who was chairman of the committee got 
up for their defense. Nolan and Mearna were first brought up as wit- 
nesses under the secret inquiry, and the Crown officials, failing to extract 
evidence from them which might serve their purpose, are charged by 
public rumor with having used threats of a character as audacious as they 
were shameful. Then these two men were arrested and charged with the 



IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893. 651 

offense, and the result proved that the Crown was unable to make even a 
firiina facie case against them. The ways of Dublin Castle are not often 
exposed to the public; but in these cases they have been brought to light, 
owing to the courage of many of the witnesses who were summoned again 
and again, and detained in the Castle without any shadow of legal 
authority. Mr. Allan has obtained statements from those witnesses as to 
the manner in which they were treated, and it will be seen from some of 
them that an attempt was made by some, at least, of the Castle officials to 
procure evidence by means that are an outrage upon justice. In the 
darkest days of our land means more infamous were never employed to 
bring men to the gallows; and it is appalling to find that they can be used 
now under a government that pretends that its mission is to do justice to 
Ireland. 

The following are the details of the interview: 

"Will you kindly tell me, Mr. Allan, how the Defense Committee 
came to be formed?" 

"Certainly. Two days after Walter Sheridan was arrested some of his 
friends came to me and asked me if I would aid them in getting up a 
defense fund, as they had the strongest reasons for believing that the box 
of detonators had been purposely 'planted' on him. A small meeting was 
called, the committee formed, and a number of collecting cards issued. 
The committee had scarcely started on its work when the arrests of John 
Nolan and John Mearna added greatly to the responsibilities, of which 
addition it has since been happily relieved." 

"Our editor has suggested to me that you and some other members 
■of the Defense Committee could give the public some information as to 
the working of the secret inquiry in Dublin Castle?" 

"Whatever information I can give you I shall give with pleasure. 
That is, so far as the attempts to work up a case against Nolan and 
Mearna went. Of course, you understand that while the Sheridan case is 
sub jit dice it would be unfair for me to say anything." 

"Of course, I understand that, Mr. Allan. But am I not right in 
thinking that the secret inquiry was held chiefly in connection with the 
charge against Nolan and Mearna." 

"You are perfectly right. The government could only hold a secret 
inquiry under the Explosives Act. They pinned the Cardiff Lane mystery 
on the abortive explosion at Aldborough Barracks, and their usual pro- 
cedure was to summon a witness to an inquiry into the attempted explo- 
sion on Saturday, November 25, and then not to ask him a single question 
about that affair. 

"But was this legal?" 

"My dear sir," said Mr. Allan smiling, "you have yet to learn that 
Dublin Castle officials think they can make their own laws or strain exist- 
ing ones to suit their objects. The Tory Government, at least, had the 
candor to hold its secret inquiries under the Coercion Act. Mr. John 
Morley and the other Liberal Ministers reject the Coercion Act with well- 
assumed scorn, but hold their secret courts for the manufacture of 
evidence just the same, and illegally stretch an entirely different Act to 
cover their shameful proceedings — another sign of the union of hearts." 

"And their methods of dealing with witnesses at the inquiry?" 

"Open bullying, cajolery, and even attempted bribery." 

"They do not seem to have been particularly successful on this 
occasion?" 

"No; quite the contrary. Thanks chiefly to the honesty and determi- 
nation of the men and women who were brought up to the inquiry, and 
thanks also, to some extent, to their own wretched procedure in the case 
against Nolan and Mearna." 



652 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

"What do you mean by that?" 

"I mean that the usual Castle method was followed. Instead of mak- 
ing an unbiased inquiry into the facts of the case with open minds, and 
then making their charge against the person or persons who were impli- 
cated by the facts, they seized upon two men whom they professed to 
consider troublesome Nationalists, and having done this, used the most 
extraordinary efforts to make the evidence fit round these men." 

"In Mr. O'Shaughnessy's eloquent speech during the hearing of the 
charge against Nolan and Mearna, he stated that a shocking threat had 
been leveled at one of the men. Is it fair to ask what this was?" 

"Well, I can only give you the statement of John Nolan, as it was 
made first to myself and afterward, in precisely the same words, to his 
counsel. He stated that when he was first brought up to the Castle, he 
was questioned privately and with much sharpness by a certain high 
Crown official, who, he said, appeared to be greatly excited, and suddenly 
turning on him, said, 'Nolan, I'll hang you if I can!' to which Nolan 
said he replied that 'if it were done it would be by foul means, for be 
could not do it by fair.' The means used were certainly not fair, either 
within the law or without it. But the story of the threat had the effect of 
putting the Defense Committee on its mettle, and within three or four 
days of the formal charging of Nolan and Mearna every man who had 
seen them on the day and evening that Reid was shot had been inter- 
viewed, and their statements taken down in writing. These informal 
depositions had been placed before Mr. Mclnerney, the energetic coun- 
sel for the defense, and were, I believe, the principal cause of his constant 
statements that the Crown could have no case against the men." 
"Unless they made one?" 

"Well, they did their best not alone to make one, but to destroy the 
defense of the men. For instance, several prominent Nationalists had 
come to us to state that they saw the two men in a well-known club on 
the north side of the city from before seven until eight o'clock on the 
night Reid was shot, Some of these gentlemen were summoned again 
and again to the Castle, and strenuous efforts made to twist and strain 
their statements in every possible manner to weaken the evidence. As 
the inquiry went on, however, the Crown lawyers began to find that the 
case for the defense of Nolan and Mearna was of a character which could 
not be broken down, and, as their own hope of making up a case against 
the men became weaker from day to day, they finally gave in." 

"Then, in one sense, Mr. Allan, the inquiry was a benefit to the 
men?" 

"Well, I can hardly admit that. The men would never have been 
charged at all had the Crown officials not had before them the hope of (as 
Mr. Mclnerney happily put it) training up a witness or two in the 
gymnastic institution in Dublin Castle. They thought it was absolutely 
necessary that a victim should be made, and in effect directed the police 
to find one Naturally the police did their best to procure what was so 
urgently required by their employers. For the blame of the whole shame- 
less proceedings, we must look behind the police and detectives, behind 
Mr. John Mullen or Mr. Home, R. M. It requires very little discern- 
ment, indeed, to see that these gentlemen were merely carrying out the 
instructions of those above them. It would be but common justice, how- 
ever, if I add that from all such comment on the Crown officials we of the 
Defense Committee make a decided exception of Mr. Sergeant Dodd, who 
throughout the whole case displayed that fairness which is strongly charac- 
teristic of him." 

"It has been stated more than once that men who were brought up for 
examination at the inquiry were detained in the Castle. Is this true?" 



IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893. 653. 

"It is, unfortunately, too true. One young fellow, a clerk in a Dub- 
lin brewery, was brought up and detained, with the result that he was 
most unjustly dismissed from his situation. In another case a man earn- 
ing a daily wage on the quay was kept in for three days, and not a penny 
compensation offered to him. Several other minor cases of this illegal 
detention occurred, the palpable inferences being that efforts were made 
to force the witnesses to give evidence useful to the Crown lawyers. In 
other cases, again, the witnesses were brought up day after day and 
worried in that wearying, dispiriting manner in which the Castle people 
seem to be past masters, with the view of inducing them to give evidence 
in support of the Crown case, whether they could honestly do so or not. 
Look, for instance, at the case of Mrs. Thomson, the landlady of the 
house in which Mearna lodged. As you will doubtless remember, she 
was called to give what the Crown lawyers are pleased to term 'evidence,' 
while as a matter of fact it was intended to call Mrs. Thomson for the 
defense, to go over the very points put in evidence by the Crown. At 
the very time that Reid had called, looking for Mearna, both Nolan and 
Mearna were up looking for re-employment in the place where they for- 
merly worked. The Crown, in the course of its secret inquiry, appears- 
to have ascertained this, and at once set to work to revise its scheme. 
Mrs. Thomson was brought up again and again and cajoled, coaxed, and 
bullied to admit that Reid had called a second time at the house later 
than 5.30. In plain language, the Crown endeavored to bully her into- 
swearing to evidence which she knew to be false. To such an extent 
was this carried that she was twice sent home in a cab from the Castle in 
a hysterical state, scarcely knowing what she was doing, and with but a 
very faint idea indeed of what she had said on her oath. On one of these 
occasions a letter was sent after her by the Castle authorities, apologizing. 
for what they were pleased to term a misunderstanding. On Friday, the 
29th December, Mrs. Thomson was summoned to the Castle at half-past 
nine in the morning. She went up, and was detained there for a couple 
of hours. Then she was brought out to the Castle yard and put into a 
cab. She asked the detective who came with her where he was bringing 
her to, and he replied, 'just over to the Attorney General. He wants to 
ask you a couple of questions.' She was brought into a building which 
she did not recognize at the time, and left in a room by herself for about 
another hour. Then, without a moment's warning, she was ushered 
through another door straight into the Police Court, and pushed roughly 
into the witness-box; and the first intimation that she had that she was 
being called as a Crown witness was when Sergeant Dodd rose and asked 
her name and address. It is difficult to explain this gross deception on 
the part of the authorities, except as a careful plan to confuse the witness, 
and to endeavor to force her into admitting the false evidence that she had 
refused to swear to at the inquiry. Needless to say that the discreditable- 
plan entirely failed; for the evidence given by Mrs. Thomson would have 
been shown to be entirely favorable to the accused had the case ever 
come to trial." 

"Was Mrs. Thomson troubled after that day?" 

"Not openly. But insidious stories were spread that she was a willing 
Crown witness ; and even on one occasion a threatening letter was sent 
to her, about which hangs a curious coincidence." 
"What is that?" 

"Well, the same week an official notice from Exchange Court was sent 
to the same address, and both documents were placed in my hands. I 
was so much struck by the similarity in their appearance that I had a 
careful examination and test made of them by an expert. His report to- 
me was that the paper and envelope used for the threatening letter and 



654 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

that used for the official Castle inquiry notice were precisely the same; 
and further, that so far as he could judge, the ink used was of exactly the 
same kind and quality. I make no comment on this, but merely state 
the interesting facts." 

Mr. Allan thereupon produced the two documents for the inspection 
of our representative, who was at once struck by the great similarity, in 
many points, between them. 

' 'Well, now, Mr. Allan, you hinted that the Defense Committee had 
considered records of the proceedings at the recent secret inquiry. Could 
you favor me with one or two examples?" 

"I could certainly furnish you with a greater quantity of copy of that 
kind than you would care to publish," replied Mr. Allan; and our repre- 
sentative fully believed him, as he saw him producing an immense pile of 
documents. "There was scarcely a witness examined whose name and 
an idea of whose evidence we did not get either directly from himself or 
from his immediate friends. For obvious reasons, however, I would pre- 
fer not to go into the evidence for the defense, a considerable portion of 
which was sworn to before the Castle inquiry. Many people who were 
perfectly willing and able to come forward and give evidence in defense 
of two young Irishmen whose lives were at stake, would have an objection 
to the publication of their names as matters of mere curiosity. When, 
however, you told me the other day that you would like to interview me 
on this subject, I made it my business to see some of the people from the 
district around Cardiff Lane who had been summoned, and to get from 
them permission to publish a plain statement of their unpleasant experi- 
ences of the Castle and Castle people. My reasons for selecting that 
particular district in particular is: (1) That the police naturally directed 
a great amount of attention to it; but also (2) that a report was spread 
through the city, as we firmly believe by police agents, that the Crown had 
got as many willing witnesses as they required from that part of Dublin. 
The plain fact being that the greatest temptations were held out and as 
frequently resisted by these humble folk — whom I know well to be among 
the hardest worked, most honest, and at the same time most thoroughly 
national people in Dublin — I mean the people of the vast coal quay and 
gas works district of our city." 

"Here," continued Mr. Allan, "I'll give you one or two statements, 
taken down by myself, which will show you what little ground there was 
for this libelous rumor. I give them to you much in the witnesses' own 
words. 

"I take the first statement of Miss Jane Porteous, a pleasing-looking 
young lady of about eighteen years of age, the daughter of a respectable 
North of Ireland man, living close to Cardiff Lane: 

"Miss Porteous states that she was brought up to the Castle inquiry 
some days after the night Reid was shot, and was sworn by Mr. Home, 
who stated that her name had been mentioned to him as one of the people 
who had been about Cardiff Lane on the night of the 27th November, 
and that he wished to ask her some questions as to her movements that 
evening. In reply to the question put to her she stated that she called 
for a friend of hers, Miss Annie Robinson, shortly after seven o'clock on 
that evening, and they walked down Cardiff Lane together. She was 
asked again and again if she saw a woman, Mrs. Hanlon, standing at her 
doorway. She said they did not notice. Asked did she see anyone in 
the lane, she replied that they noticed two men, like workingmen, but 
they did not pay any attention to them. Over and over again she was 
pressed for a description of the men, although she had already sworn that 
they had taken no notice of them, and could not possibly identify them in 
any way. She was spoken to very roughly, and was told that they were 



IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893. 655; 

quite certain she had seen the men who shot Reid, and that it would be 
better for herself if she spoke out; and they added that nothing spoken 
in the Castle would ever be known down at the quay. She still held to 
her statement that she could not identify the men, as she did not pay any 
attention to them, and to the other points she had spoken about, and Mr. 
Home said he was convinced she and Miss Robinson were two perjurers, 
and that he would give them a month's imprisonment each if they did not 
speak out. He also asked her did she say anything to her mother about 
the two men, and although she said she did not, pressed her over and 
over again to admit that she had. He finally sent her out of the room in 
charge of a detective, and she thought she was being sent to jail for a 
month as he had threatened her, but she was released the same evening. 
She was ill for two days owing to the treatment she had undergone. 
While she was in the Castle she was told that if she spoke the truth she 
would be recompensed. 

"Miss Annie Robinson, to whom Miss Porteous refers in her state- 
ment, gave practically the same record of the proceedings at the inquiry 
as her friend, Miss Porteous. She also was pressed very hard to say she 
had seen Mrs. Hanlon at her door in Cardiff Lane, and Mr. Mallon said 
she (Miss Robinson) could not have gone down Cardiff Lane without see- 
ing Mrs. Hanlon and a man named Walsh speaking to her. They also 
pressed her very hard to say that she saw a man named Laurence Keeffe 
in the lane, although she told them again and again she had not, and Mr. 
Mallon said that she must speak out — that she could not live near the 
quay without knowing Keeffe, and that she must have seen him in the 
lane. They said that they would give her a month's imprisonment if she 
did not tell them what they were aware she knew. She was brought up 
twice, and on the first occasion was kept in for over four hours. 

"Bernard Meleady, who lives close to the place where Reid was shot, 
states that he was brought up to the inquiry and pressed hard to give 
evidence. He was at home before seven o'clock, and, having to go on to 
work early in the morning, went to bed, and heard nothing about the 
occurrence till the following morning. He told them this at the Castle, 
but they professed to disbelieve him, and said that he must have heard 
something of the murder. They pressed him to answer other questions, 
but he said he could not, and finally they let him go. 

"Mrs. Nolan, who keeps a little shop close to Cardiff Lane, was 
brought up and asked if any men had bought matches from her on the 
night of the 27th November. She said she believed several had, but that 
she could not recognize any of them, as she paid no particular attention 
to them. They pressed her very hard for a description of the men who- 
had called, and very unfairly delayed her a long time at the Castle, 
although she told them she had to shut up her shop to go up to the 
inquiry. 

"Laurence Keeffe, of Harmony Row, was brought up to the Castle a 
couple of times, and on one occasion was detained for two days and 
nights, during which he was questioned several times. He stated that he 
was up and down to the quays through Cardiff Lane three or four times 
between six and eight o'clock on the evening of the 27th, but that he did 
not notice anything particular going on, until, near eight o'clock, he heard 
of the occurrence and saw the crowds about. They threatened him with 
a statement that they had evidence against himself, and that he had better 
speak out and tell all he knew if he wanted to save himself. He also was 
told by one of the detectives that he would be made comfortable if he 
would tell them about the men whom he must have seen in Cardiff Lane. 
He said he knew nothing, and after keeping him in the Castle from Wed- 
nesday to Friday he was released. During his detention in the Castle he 



'656 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

{Keeffe) was told, as an inducement to him to give information, that the 
man who first put the Castle 'on the track of the Phoenix Park murderers' 
was still walking about Dublin an independent man. He was also told 
t>y one of the detectives that it was one of the men then in custody who 
should have been hanged for the Seville place murder, and not Joe 
Poole; and that they were determined to have him this time. Two offers 
of money were made to him during the time he was in custody. 

"Mrs. Mary Hanlon, of Queen's Square, states that the following is a 
summary of the evidence given by her at the inquiry, and of her experi- 
ence thereat: She was standing at her back gate, which opens into Cardiff 
Lane, shortly after seven o'clock on the night of the 27th November, 
when a man named Walsh came up and asked if her husband was in. 
She said she expected him in every moment, and asked Walsh in to wait 
for him. They chatted at the gate for a moment, and were speaking of 
the men on sea, for the wind was blowing very hard, when Walsh 
remarked, 'Here are three seamen coming up,' She looked up the lane 
and saw three men coming, and as they passed her she said, 'They are 
not sailors,' at which one of the men turned round and she saw his face. 
He made some remark, apparently to her, but she did not catch what he 
said. She did not pay any attention to the men with him. As the men 
passed, Walsh went in with her to wait for her husband, and a short time 
after, on going to the door, she heard that a man had shot himself down 
the lane. Walsh and she went out to the crowd that had gathered in the 
lane, and while standing there she heard it remarked that the man wore 
a soft cap and an overcoat. 'Oh,' she said, 'that is like the man who 
passed our gate just now.' Immediately she was grasped by a policeman, 
who asked her for an explanation of what she had said, and she was then 
brought off to the hospital with Walsh and some others. She saw the 
body of a man lying in the hospital, and they were asked if they recog- 
nized him. Walsh went over and lifted the cover off his face, and 
remarked that that was the man who had made the remark to her when 
passing the gate. She said it was. The police asked her to describe the 
other two men, but she said she could not, as she had paid no particular 
attention to them. She said, however, she believed that she never saw 
the men before. She was brought up to the Castle at twelve o'clock that 
night, and pressed hard to give some description of the men, but again she 
said she could not do so. During the week she was brought up again, 
and they told her that they had it from friends of hers that she knew 
Mearna well, and pressed her to state that he was one of the men she saw 
with Reid; but she said she did not recognize either of the men with Reid. 
Some days afterward she was brought up to Kilmainham prison, and the 
two men Nolan and Mearna, whom she afterward saw in the Police 
Courts, were marched up and down before a window at which she was 
placed, and she was asked if she could identify them as the men she saw 
with Reid. She said, however, that they did not look at all like them. 
She said to the detective who went up with her that it was not honest to 
put two men out in the yard by themselves, and to ask her to identify 
them, instead of placing them among others. She said, too, that she 
thought Nolan and Mearna looked far older than the style of the men she 
saw in Cardiff Lane with Reid. 'Oh,' said the detective who was with 
her (she believed his name was Brien), 'we must shave them and brush 
them up before you see them again.' She was brought up again to the 
Castle a few days after that, and once more pressed to 'speak out,' and 
hints were given to her that she would be made comfortable if she would 
help on the case. On the day before the men were acquitted, a detective 
whom she did not know, but whom she saw in the Castle and in the court, 
called at her house and said he wanted to say a few words to her about 



IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893. 657 

this case. He said she was a young woman beginning the world, and she 
would be a foolish woman if she did not better herself by helping them 
on with the case. Her husband then came in to his dinner, and the 
detective dropped the subject, but introduced it again after a couple of 
minutes' conversation with her husband, and said to them: 'Both of you 
would get any acknowledgment you like if you make this case.' He then 
went out, but apparently waited about, because he came to the door again 
immediately after her husband, Jack Hanlon, went back to work, and 
again brought up the subject to her. 'Now, Mrs. Hanlon,' he said, 'you 
know you saw Mearna in the lane with Reid. Come, now, will you not 
take a comfortable sum of money and speak out; we will ship you to any 
part of the world you like if you don't wish to stay here. You need not 
be afraid to name a sum up to one thousand pounds if you make the case 
for us.' Mrs. Hanlon replied that she 'would not take the place of the 
Queen on the throne and do a thing like that.' Jack Hanlon, her hus- 
band, was brought up to the Castle that evening, and kept in till nine 
o'clock. He told her that he was pressed hard to induce his wife to 
'speak out,' and promises were held out that 'they'd both be made com- 
fortable for life if they'd do so.' Some days before that Mr. Mallon and 
two detectives called at her house during the evening and brought her 
down to her back gate. Mr. Mallon stopped inside the gate in the posi- 
tion in which she said she was standing when Reid and the two other men 
passed, while one of the detectives went outside and walked down the 
lane past the gate. She heard them saying among themselves that noth- 
ing could be seen distinctly, and that it was quite possible she could not 
recognize anyone passing unless he turned toward her. Even after 
that, however, she was pressed to say she recognized Mearna. On the 
morning of the 12th inst. she was brought up to the Castle, and from there 
to the police court, and while there a couple of the detectives came to 
her, and said they hoped she would help them to 'make the case.' She 
replied sharply that she had told them the truth, and that she neither 
could nor would say any more. They went out then, and a short time 
afterward Nolan and Mearna were brought in and discharged. On the 
Tuesday after they were discharged, two of the detectives went down to 
Mrs. Hanlon 's house and asked her if she had got a good view of the men 
in the court on the previous Friday. She said she had. 'Now, Mrs. 
Hanlon,' said one of them, 'were not those the two men you saw going 
down the lane with Reid?' 'No,' replied Mrs. Hanlon, 'I am sure those 
were not the men.' That was the last interview she had with any of them. 
"John Hanlon, of Queen's Square, husband of the Mrs. Hanlon 
whose statement is given above, states that he was brought up to the 
Castle twice, the second occasion being the night before the men were 
acquitted, and the first about a week previous. On the first occasion he 
saw Mr. Molloy, who said that he had become informed that he (Hanlon) 
was intimidating his wife, and preventing her from speaking the truth. 
He denied that, and challenged them to produce his wife and ask her. 
They threatened to arrest him for intimidation if he did not mind himself. 
On the Wednesday previous to the acquittal he went home to his dinner, 
and found a detective there talking to his wife. He (the detective) spoke 
to them of the poorness of their rooms, and told them that if they would 
only help the Crown with this case, they would be made comfortable for 
life. On the following evening he was summoned to the Castle and went 
up about five o'clock. He saw a high official whom he knew and two 
whom he knew to be detectives. He was again accused of intimidating 
his wife, and urged to make her speak. 'Can't you get her to speak out?' 
said one of the detectives. 'Look here, Hanlon,' said the other, who 
was the man who had been in his house at dinner time the previous day. 



658 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

'Look here, Hanlon; don't let five hundred pounds stop you; there will 
be five hundred pounds here in the morning at ten o'clock for you if 
you'll help us.' He replied that so far as he knew his wife had spoken 
the truth, and he would not ask her to do anything else. After a short 
time he was sent away. 

"Of the many other witnesses brought up to the inquiry it may be 
mentioned that a Mrs. Thomas and a Mrs. McCoy, who both lived close 
to the place where Reid was shot, were examined. Their evidence was 
interesting in so far as both of them deposed to hearing the shots, but as 
neither of them would swear to seeing any man in the lane their state- 
ments were not considered valuable." 

"Have you anything further to add, Mr. Allan?" 
- "Well, nothing that I think I should give you for present publication. 
The report of offers of Castle money are widespread, and I could give 
you more statements of that character, but it is a serious subject to touch 
upon, and I prefer to leave it at what I have given you. I feel it is neces- 
sary to vindicate the characters of the poor hard-working honest people 
round the coal quay and gas works, and give public testimony to the 
honesty and courage of women like Mrs. Hanlon. People talk glibly 
enough of the pretended care with which Crown witnesses are procured 
in such cases as these in Ireland; but I feel satisfied that in no other 
country but Ireland would humble working people like the Hanlons resist 
such temptations as were offered to them." 

"Has the Defense Committee been interfered with by the police in its 
work?" 

"As a committee, no. But almost every member of it was annoyed a 
good deal. One member, for instance, had to change his lodgings owing 
to the severity of the supervision; another was threatened with loss of his 
situation for the same cause; the house of a third was visited and ran- 
sacked, and so on. Mr. James Boland, you may remember, was pulled 
out of a train when on his way to Mountrath on his business by detectives, 
who said they were instructed to prevent his leaving town, yet there never 
was even a pretense that there was the slightest charge against him." 

"As to yourself, Mr. Allan. I understand you had your share of 
annoyance also?" 

"Well, I had my share. A pretty strict supervision was kept on me 
all the time I was working up the defense, and in the beginning people 
coming into my house were even stopped and questioned. I had a couple 
of domiciliary visits from the police also, and I was summoned to the 
inquiry a couple of times to answer some questions in connection with the 
club visited by Nolan and Mearna on the night of the 27th November, of 
the committee of which I am a member. I don't complain of this; but 
what I do think I have a right to complain of is, that reports were con- 
stantly spread by the police among my personal friends that my 'arrest 
might be hourly expected,' with a view, I presume, to make me give up 
the defense of these men. I was surprised to find Mr. Mallon descend- 
ing to this kind of warfare, although he knew perfectly well there was not 
the smallest truth in the 'friendly (?) hint.' A far more malicious story 
was spread about me by, I believe, some of the law agents of the Crown, 
to the effect that when I was in custody myself some nine years ago on 
a charge of treason felony, I made an agreement with the Castle. It was 
a most villainous statement to make, for nearly every one of my old per- 
sonal friends is aware that just before I was arrested at that time I had 
secured a pretty lucrative journalistic position in England, and that the 
Castle people became aware of this, and that when the case against Mr. 
P. N. Fitzgerald broke down, they sent an offer to my solicitor to release 
me if I'd agree to live out of Ireland for two years; and that my answer 



IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893. , 659 

to the proposal was to throw up the position in England. I never heard 
another word about this proposal till the other day; for, indeed, when I 
was released on bail, the case being too weak to go on with, the late Mr. 
E. Dvvyer Gray kindly reinstated me in my old position in the Freeman 
office, and I have lived in Dublin ever since. 

"Could the spreading of such a scandalous invention have any other 
object than to shake confidence in you in the minds of people who may be 
disposed to come forward with evidence for the defense of those men?" 

"I see no other reason for it. But the whole affair is hardly calcu- 
lated to fill one with affection or respect for Dublin Castle or its officials. 
However, you will excuse me for taking up time with a personal matter. 
I would not have done so but that Mr. Harrington, M. P., ran across the 
lie the other day at the Four Courts and sent me a friendly word of advice 
to expose it at the first opportunity, and as it is a good specimen of the 
average Dublin Castle methods, which honest men have only to see exposed 
when they will be filled with dislike and contempt for the whole mode of 
procedure and perhaps endeavor to thwart it as much as lies in their 
power — this is why I give you the incident." 

"The secret inquiry is still going on, is it not?" 

"It is. The Crown is apparently determined to magnify into a state 
trial the miserable result of a drunken spree in the Sheridan case; but I 
believe the public will back up the Defense Committee sufficiently, and 
will continue to do so until a proper defense is provided in this case 
also." 

This description of star chamber practices in Dublin is a repetition 
of the examination of Mr. Kinsella, the Blackrock station master, in an 
early chapter of this book. In what manner has British rule in Ireland 
changed by the defeat of the Tories in the election of 1892? Here is an 
account of the self-same infamies of Gladstone and the Red Earl prac- 
ticed in 1882-83, repeated in 1893, by Gladstone and Morley. Where — 
where is the proof of any change in foreign rule in Ireland? It is an 
insult to our intelligence to say that this damnable crime, the rule of the 
Briton in Ireland, could be reformed. No matter what party or minister 
is in power it is alike tyrannically cruel and destructive. Bribes, threats, 
every species of terror and infamy practiced on the people; men kept in 
prison for days, without the shadow of a charge preferred against them; 
their employers afraid to restore them to their positions, for fear that 
they too would become suspected of disloyalty to the foreigner; even 
women arrested; every species of hellish coercion used; large sums 
offered to bribe and cajole the people to become perjurers! Is it any 
wonder that sometimes weak men fall under the dreadful mental tortures 
applied by that foreign murder conspiracy that usurps the government of 
Ireland in Dublin Castle? The Mallon spoken of in the Dublin Inde- 
pendent is the same police agent of the enemy who figures in another part 
of this history. The system which creates these tools of iniquity in 
Ireland demands fawning, lying, and sycophantic instruments to deceive 
and entrap fresh victims to do the infamous service of their masters, the 
foreign conspirators in Dublin. And all this infamy is practiced under 
the British Administration of Ireland's canting friend, Win. E. Gladstone. 
If there are any two names among British ministers that will stand out 
more prominently for Irish posterity to condemn and speak of with honest 
loathing, these names will be Gladstone and Morley; for both men have 
by deceptive promises induced numbers of the Irish people to believe in 
the sincerity of their friendship, and by their actions, as here described, 
proved more cruel than their open and undisguised enemies, the Tories. 

The years between the writing of this book and its closing Addendum 



660 THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES. 

has seen a great change come over the Irish-American people on the Irish 
question. The false and illusory dream created by the Provincialists, 
that a compromise between the Briton and the Irish could be arranged 
under the banner of home rule has almost entirely passed. Some few 
men of wealth who would be Whigs in the old country, and some few 
others who have interested motives, try to keep alive the flicker of this 
bastard nationality with the meaningless name, home rule. The work 
of a few zealous men in Irish circles has borne fruit; the folly of agitation 
to solve this usurpation of the invader in Ireland is fully realized among 
the patriotic exiles and their children. To more effectively preach this 
true love of the old land, an organ of propaganda has commenced its 
career with the uncompromising name of The Irish Republic ; this news- 
paper is under the management of a wealthy business man in New York 
City, Mr. William Lyman, who is well known in Ireland and wherever 
Irish Nationalists dwell, as the treasurer of the "Irish National League," 
under its new regime in the United States. The editor of The Irish 
Republic is Charles O'Connor McLaughlin, a graduate of the college of 
St. Jarleths, Tuam. Previous to his arrival in the States he was on the 
Dublin Freeman, and had great opportunities for studying the Irish Parlia- 
mentary policy in the country, where, as a newspaper man he was sent 
to write up evictions, meetings, and other phases of Irish life during the 
agitation. More recently he was one of the staff of T. P. O'Connor's 
London newspaper. He has had an intimate acquaintance with the mem- 
bers of the Irish Parliamentary party, and fully realizes the folly of their 
programme. Under his able guidance The Irish Republic will preach the 
true and only propaganda for subject peoples. 

If this book does the smallest good, or contributes in any manner to 
stem the disastrous tide which leads to emigration, by arousing Irishmen 
to a sense of their duty to work, and preach the only true doctrine for 
subject peoples — the complete removal of foreign rule from their 
country — the writer will feel that he has not worked in vain. 

If Irishmen will stand up erect and cease to sit at the feet of any 
British Minister; in their united and properly directed strength, and in 
face of the decaying and rotting physical power of the enemy, the close 
of this century, near as is that period, will see Ireland added to the nations 
of the earth, a sovereign member of the world's family of nations. And 
the close of the nineteenth century will witness the uprising of the ancient 
Celtic race when the epitaph of that young hero-martyr, Robert Emmet, 
will have been written by an intelligent and valiant people. 



THE END. 



THE 



Irish National Invincibles 



AND THEIR TIMES 



THREE DECADES OF STRUGGLE AGAINST THE FOREIGN 
CONSPIRATORS IN DUBLIN CASTLE 



rHE PARLIAMENTARY PROVINCIAUSTS' AGITATION TO REFORM 

FOREIGN RULE, FROM ISAAC BUTT'S MOVEMENT IN 1870 TO 

GLADSTONE'S BILL IN 1886. THE IRISH NATIONALISTS' 

PREPARATIONS TO TAKE THE FIELD AGAINST 

THE INVADER'S FORCES IN 1865, 1866, AND 

1867. GUERRILLA WARFARE OF 

THE IRISH NATION IN 

1882, 1883, AND 1884 



WITH AN ADDENDUM 

IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF 1893 



HY 



P. J. P. TYNAN 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLE PUBLISHING CO. 

1894 



